14
“No! No, no, no. Why do you insist on being so difficult? What’s the matter with you, girl? Do you like it? Is that it? Do you like it when I do these things to you? You must. You really just must, or else you would learn to do what you’re told. Now, do what I told you to!”
The feeling of his fist making contact with the center of her stomach felt like a concrete block being dropped on top of her from above. He was shockingly strong, this crazy vampire. Even after having gone through the trauma of having him launch her across her own apartment (a place she knew she would never step foot in again, she thought bitterly, if she was lucky enough to make it out of this alive), she’d underestimated him.
She’d underestimated his strength, but also his will. His will to hurt her, to keep going at it long after a human would have tired, was astounding. From what Delaney could tell, it literally knew no bounds. Strangely, crazily, she thought about when she had been a little girl and believed that the best way to get what she wanted from her mother was to nag and nag and nag until she gave in from sheer exhaustion and lack of the ability to fight anymore.
Delaney had long ago grown apart from her mother, but she would issue the woman an apology for it now if she could. For the first time, she thought she had some idea what someone being that brutally relentless with you actually felt like. She hoped she didn’t have to feel it for much longer, however this thing played out. She thought she’d go just as crazy as Lucas if she did.
“Up! Get up, get up right now! Nobody told you to lie down, now did they? No, I don’t believe they did. After all, I’m the only one here aside from you, and I certainly didn’t tell you to.”
“I’m trying,” Delaney spat out with blood and spit through teeth that were grinding incessantly. “Just give me a second, okay? It doesn’t help when you hit me like that. It makes it harder. It makes everything you want me to do harder.”
“Does it really?” he asked with a questioning tone that couldn’t possibly have been real, “Imagine that. Imagine being so weak.”
“That’s what you like, isn’t it? You like women who are weak. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Well, well, look who’s paying attention now. I’m flattered, really. I didn’t realize you cared.”
Delaney, helpless to stop herself, let out a little moan of disgust. It was the last way to help herself and she knew it, but she was beyond the point of controlling herself. She was like a person subjected to hour after hour of interrogation who was on the verge of confessing to a crime she hadn’t committed.
She was very close to being too helpless to help herself. As if to bring that point home, Lucas crouched down in front of her again, his head cocked to one side like a wild animal trying to make sense of something he didn’t quite understand. Then he got very, very close, his nauseous breath pouring over her so that she couldn’t stop herself from retching.
. The look in his eyes was something she would never, never be able to describe. As far as she was concerned, Charlie Manson’s crazy didn’t come close to touching this. Not even a little.
“You do realize that I’m the one in control here, don’t you darling? Please tell me you’ve worked that much out.”
“Yes.”
“Then you like to be hurt. That must be it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t make me so angry.”
“Said every man who ever abused a woman in the history of the world.”
Up on his feet like a shot, Lucas kicked her squarely in the ribs, pulling from her a cry of pain that didn’t even sound human. Maybe he was right. Maybe she really was crazy. But she would rather be crazy then compliant. She had already established for herself that nobody knew where she was.
Nobody was coming for her and the blacked-out windows of the warehouse Lucas had dragged her to told her that nobody was going to accidentally happen upon them. This was where Lucas had chosen to do his dirty work for a reason. He was confident that he wouldn’t be disturbed.
If that was the case, then so be it. The thing she wasn’t going to do was allow him to win and the only way to do that was to make sure that he never touched her spirit. He thought she was weak. He was wrong. She might not have been a warrior, but she was strong in her own right.
That was a strength she was determined to hold onto until the end. Every blow he delivered only hardened that resolve in her. She could be one stubborn girl when she wanted to be, and right now that was the only thing she had to hold onto.
“Up! I want to dance. I want to waltz, do you hear me? It’s been so long since I’ve waltzed, so dreadfully long.”
“I heard you,” she said with grim determination as she pulled herself up to her feet. “Believe me, I heard you.”
“Then let’s go! Music, Delaney, where’s the music?!”
“I told you,” she replied as levelly as she was able, “I don’t have any music. This is your place, right? If anyone has music, it’s you, and from the looks of this place you don’t have a CD player.”
Lucas growled, that angry growl Delaney had already come to recognize as the signal that something bad was coming. She steeled herself, part of her hoping it wasn’t too bad and part of her hoping that it was the final blow. It wasn’t like she had a death wish or anything, far from it, but she also wasn’t a glutton for pain. She saw no sense in drawing this thing out. It wouldn’t change anything.
That was where her thoughts were going, until she caught a glimpse of movement from somewhere behind Lucas. She couldn’t be sure if it was where the entrance was because she didn’t remember being brought into Lucas’ terrible dungeon of pain, but she thought it just might be.
Was there someone there? Was there? She couldn’t be sure, but she thought there just might be. Then again, it was equally possible that she had hallucinated it out of desperation for some kind of help. The trouble was that she couldn’t get a good enough look at the area to know for sure, not without staring, which was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do.
If there really was somebody there to help her, not one of Lucas’ people or someone who would turn out to be only a figment of her imagination, she wanted to give the guy every chance possible. Giving Lucas the heads up would pretty much do the opposite of that.
All of the sudden, her game plan had changed. Reaching desperately into a bag of tricks that was virtually empty and trying to fend off an angry and rapidly advancing Lucas, she shouted out the only thing she could think of to say.
“You can be the music!”
Lucas stopped, cocked his head again, dumbfounded by this latest surprise. As he was doing this, turning the comment over and over in his mind like a brand new shiny penny, Delaney risked a glance over his shoulder. She was terrified to do it, and for more than one reason.
First, she was sickly afraid that she would look and there would be nothing there. If that were the case, she had no idea what she would do. Then there was the idea of someone there and what would happen when Lucas spotted him.
Because it was a him, and he was there. It hadn’t been her imagination at all. Creeping toward her with one finger held up to his lips, was Jack. He was the last person she would have expected and not a surprise at all, all at the same time. In that moment, she felt a surge of love for Jack unlike anything she’d ever felt for anyone, ever before.
Intellectually, she knew it was only a response to her drastic circumstances and to the fact that Jack was now her proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. She knew that, but she also didn’t care. What she cared about was that she now had a chance, and that was something worth fighting for.
“What do you mean?”
“What?”
“You!” Lucas roared, rearing back in preparation to strike her again, “What do you mean?! What do you mean by that, by telling me to be the music?!”
“I’m sorry, I know I’m not making sense. I only meant that I don’t know waltzes. I’m guessing there are a lot of things you know about that I don’t.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, sure. Of course, it is. I’ve never even been out of the state of Texas. I don’t know where you’re from, but I can tell from your voice that you’ve been all over. I can’t even imagine the things you’ve seen.”
“And?”
“And I’m sure you know what a waltz sounds like. So maybe it doesn’t matter that we don’t have any actually music. Maybe you could just hum the tune or something and then we could dance that way.”
“Interesting. That’s very interesting. You might have something there. There may be some kind of hope for you, after all, Delaney. We may even get to delay our inevitable finale.”
“You’ll have to show me what to do, all right? I’ve never danced with a guy before.”
“Never what? Never danced with a man? You must not have known many real ones then. I’ll show you. I suspect I’ll be showing you all kinds of things you never thought you’d be doing.”
Delaney took a deep breath, willing herself not to look back in Jack’s direction. This dance would be the most important performance of her life. If she didn’t nail it, she would be out of options.
“Here, don’t be shy. You’ll have to get closer than that.”
Before she knew what was happening, Lucas had taken her into his arms, smashed her up against him so close that she felt like she would suffocate. She might have preferred suffocation to how completely she could smell him now. She was sure, absolutely sure that he hadn’t changed his clothes in at least a year. At least.
“There, that’s a good girl. Follow the music.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“I’m sure you are. But do you want to know what I really want?”
“I thought it was to dance.”
“Oh, it was. Was, mind you. It’s not now.”
“What do you want now?”
“I want to see what you taste like.”
Her stomach dropped to her feet. How stupid she’d been. She had been sure, so naïvely sure, that she was going to be able to keep Lucas occupied until Jack could figure out a way to stop Lucas. Now, it turned out she was going to die in exactly the same way. The only difference was that now she had the knowledge that someone had cared enough to try and save her, and that was a sweet thing to take with her.
She felt tears spring to her eyes for the first time since this whole ordeal had begun. It wasn’t the fact that she was going to die, either. As absurd as it might be, the thing that was making her feel so sad was knowing when it was too late to do anything, that Jack was someone she could really take a shot at things with. Stupid, maybe, but that didn’t make it any less true. She shut her eyes, lifted her head to the heavens, and whispered what she expected to be her last words.
“I’m sorry.”
Things changed very quickly then. Lucas, who was thrown off by the apology, pulled back some, looking at her with confusion. Not that he had long to look at her, though, because at almost the same moment Jack came charging into him from the side.
Lucas, who had miraculously not realized that he and his prize were no longer alone, was knocked onto his back several feet away from where he had just been about to drain Delaney of her life-force.
Delaney, whose eyes had still been closed and hadn’t seen a thing, let out a gasp and stumbled backward and out of the line of fire. Jack closed in on her, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her lightly in order to get her to focus on his face.
“Jack? Jack, is it really you?”
“It’s me. Christ, Delaney, are you okay?”
“I-I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Sorry? What could you possibly be sorry for? This isn’t your fault, none of it is.”
She wanted to tell him all the things in her heart, things she didn’t even have the words to express, but she didn’t have the chance. They had both been foolish to stop and speak to each other at all with Lucas still over there on the floor.
It wasn’t as if he was gone for good. He wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the East and no house was going to drop down on top of him. He recovered quickly, much more quickly than she would have expected, and was up on his feet and ready to fight. The first thing he did was smash into Delaney, tossing her to the side like a ragdoll.
She went flying straight into a pane of glass, some lonely remnant of a forgotten attempt at revamping the warehouse the way that someone had done with The Blood. It broke into pieces upon contact, cutting her arms, the back of her neck, all exposed skin in dozens of little places. She was stunned and disoriented, enough so that she almost forgot where she was and what was happening.
A shout of rage coming from Lucas was enough to pull her back into reality again, and as she struggled to her feet she let out a wail of horror. She felt like she was watching two gladiators fight. Never in her life had she seen anything so savage.
Both of the vampires seemed to completely defy gravity, their bodies twisting through the air like contortionists. If she hadn’t known that it was a fight, she might have actually enjoyed it, just for the display of sheer athleticism. Except that it wasn’t just that she was seeing, there was much, much more.
The two men would hit the ground and all she could hear was the crack of snapping bones. Each man snarling, they snapped and tore at each other, doing their best to rip each other to shreds.
She was sure that Jack would come out on top. If for nothing else, then just because he appeared to be so much healthier than Lucas. She struggled forward, wanting to help even though she didn’t know how, but she found that she wasn’t able to.
One step and she buckled to the floor, her left ankle having decided it was no longer up to the task of carrying her modest amount of weight. She let out a shrill cry of pain, made more piercing by the shards of glass that embedded themselves into her palms when she hit the floor.
“Delaney!”
She knew before she looked up what was going to happen. Jack, who had managed to wrestle Lucas to the floor and had one boot placed squarely on his neck, was rattled by the sound of her scream. He must have thought someone else was there with them, that one of Lucas’ people had taken her and was going to hurt her while her rescuer’s attention was occupied elsewhere.
That moment, that moment when Jack’s attention was divided, it was such a short one! It was so short it was stupid, so short it shouldn’t have mattered at all, except that it did. When it came to matters of life and death, even the smallest moments mattered very much. It was enough time for Delaney to understand that she was Jack’s weakness, his Achilles’ heel. It was also enough time for Lucas to right himself, putting himself in the position to be the victor.
With a knife she hadn’t even known he had, Lucas reached out and cut the tendons in the backs of both of Jack’s legs. Soundlessly, he dropped to his knees, then fell back, his wide eyes looking at the ceiling in disbelief.
All of Lucas’ feeling of defeat was gone. He circled his prey, finally dropping down behind Jack’s head. He wrapped both of his hands around Jack’s neck and began to twist. Jack let out a little whining noise, a sound Delaney realized was his desperate attempt to take in air. He was failing. He was failing, and while he was doing it, Lucas was in the process of ripping his head off.
That was what he was going to do. Delaney didn’t know how she knew it but she did, deep down in her gut where lies weren’t allowed. He was going to twist until he snapped Jack’s head clean off and once that was done, there would be nothing left to do. She knew vampires healed at an accelerated weigh humans could only dream of, but decapitation? Nothing could fix that, not even vampirism.
Delaney would wonder many, many times for years to come how she managed to do the thing she did next. She would think about those stories she saw on the news from time-to-time, the ones where mothers were able to lift entire cars in order to save their children. Maybe it was something sort of like that with her, too. She was pretty sure her ankle was broken, but she brought herself back up to her feet anyway.
If it had been her entire leg that was broken, she would have found a way to drag herself along. All she knew was that she had to get to where Jack’s life was being taken from him and she had to do it quickly, quietly so as not to attract Lucas’ attention. The only weapon she had was a large shard of glass, larger than the knife Lucas had used to mutilate Jack.
She clutched so tightly that blood dripped from her closed fist and down the length of her trembling forearm. It didn’t matter. She could have sliced the damn thing off and it wouldn’t have bothered her a bit, not with the adrenaline pumping through her body.
Every step she took felt like it triggered a little mini heart attack. With each one, she was totally sure that Lucas would sense her presence and that it would cause him to finish his gruesome task. She knew that if he realized what she was doing, he would finish Jack off and then he would finish her, too.
If it had just been her, she might not have been strong enough. For Jack? For him, it turned out she was willing to do a hell of a lot. For him, she was able to make it right behind her tormentor, so close he would have smelled her had he been paying attention. Because of his feeling of euphoria over the torture he was inflicting, he was all but blind to everything else. It wasn’t until she spoke that he knew she was there, and by then it was too late.
“Tell me, Lucas, is this weak enough for you?”
She let out a primal scream and struck, drawing the glass across his exposed neck with as much force as she could muster. The amount of blood was nauseating, like every drop he had was pouring out of him in a river. His hand flew from Jack’s neck to his own. The scrambling, fumbling nature of his movements made it look like he thought he could somehow catch the blood and put it back in where it belonged.
She drew back the makeshift blade, pain searing in her own hand as well, and sliced again. The final blow was delivered right between his shoulder blades. The only sounds he made now were gurgling ones and these came as he collapsed to the floor. Once there, he twitched, convulsed, and then did not move again. Delaney had no idea how these things worked, but it looked to her like he was dead. She had killed a vampire, and now it was time to save one.
She crawled forward, her ankle throbbing uncontrollably now, until she had reached Jack and could cradle his head in her lap. When she looked down at his face, she began to sob. What she saw there, it was death coming for him.
At first she couldn’t understand it but when she looked to where his legs lay useless and filleted like a fish, she understood. The amount of blood that had come out of him was staggering and it didn’t look like it was slowing down anytime soon. His neck looked distorted and black, his windpipe almost crushed and his chest making a rattling sound. A death rattle, that was what it was.
“Jack,” she choked out, doing her best to keep his head perfectly still and failing miserably, “Jack, please, tell me what I can do.”
“You’re... safe.”
“I’m safe. He’s dying. Or at least I think he is. I cut his throat. I think I stabbed him, too. I can’t remember. I don’t know what to do, Jack! Tell me what to do!”
Between her blood, the blood leaking out of Jack’s broken body, and the blood she’d spilled from Lucas, everything was a horror show. She couldn’t even figure out where Jack needed her the most. She only knew that he needed her now the way she had needed him, and she was failing him. Every second that ticked by without her doing something to make him better was another bitter failure. She had to make this right. If she didn’t, she would never be able to recover.
“Please.” She sobbed harder, her breath catching and searing in a ribcage that also felt broken. “Please, you have to tell me what to do. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Anything. I’ll do anything.”
“Nothing to do,” he croaked, coughing harshly and sending another spurt of blood trickling down the side of his once beautiful mouth. “Too much.”
“Too much? Too much what, Jack? I don’t understand!”
“Too much blood. Too much gone. Can’t heal. You... go. Go, somewhere else. Somewhere safe.”
Delaney let out another sob, but this time it was a sigh of relief. It was so simple, so simple she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought about it herself. She pulled herself around to Jack’s side, laying his head down as gently as she could manage. She took the glass that had been her weapon and cut a deeper gash in the palm of her hand. She held it out to him eagerly, ready for him to drink.
“Take mine.”
“Can’t. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, really? What don’t I understand? You’re dying because you don’t have enough blood, right? Would my blood help you? Would it heal you?”
“Yes, but-”
“But nothing! But nothing, Jack. This isn’t even a conversation. If it’ll save you, we’re doing it. You’re not dying. Not here. Not because of me.”
“It’ll change. Everything. We’ll... be linked. We’ll belong to each other.”
He was struggling so severely that he could hardly get the words out, but she still understood. Her blood. If she gave him her blood, the amount that he would need to become whole again, they would be linked in a forever kind of way. Maybe that should have given her a moment of pause, it didn’t.
Not for one second. Slipping her hand underneath his neck, she raised his head just enough so that he would be able to drink. His eyes held a question, and that question was whether or not she was sure? She bent forward, kissing his mouth despite all of the blood.
Then she put her palm to his mouth and he began to drink. He drank for a long, long time. He drank until she felt the world around her begin to grow dim and gray. It was possible that he would drink enough of her that she wouldn’t survive and, as funny as it was, she didn’t even mind. That was the kind of thing you did to people. It was the kind of thing you did for the people who captured your heart.