MORE TIME PASSED. I HAD no concept of how long, but I guessed it felt longer than it really was. Every time I felt like giving up, like surrendering myself, like forgetting, I searched myself for every piece of anger I could muster up, and I held onto it all like a hot ball of hate to fling at my kidnappers.
And in amongst all of that seething rage, I dreamed of Jared. I dreamed of my mother.
Hours (days?) passed, and I heard a key thunk in the door. My stomach rumbled as I heaved myself off the floor and onto my feet. I hated being vulnerable on the floor, so even though I could barely stand, I chose to be stubborn and leaned against the wall.
Caleb appeared in the doorway. I was surprised; I’d only seen him in the room once in all this time, and that was when he was murdering my roomie. He shut the door firmly behind him, and surveyed me curiously.
“How do you feel today?” he asked, without a trace of the anger or the black eyes I’d witnessed the day before. A hundred possible caustic comments presented themselves, but I didn’t answer him. He took three steps and was close enough for me to reach out and punch him. So I did. But my fist was clumsy and barely connected with his face. I think it hurt my hand more than it hurt him.
So you could say that I had it coming when he drew his fist back and slammed it into my cheek, so hard that I swear he almost took my head off.
He smiled as I groaned and clutched my face. “Today is an angry day,” he observed, with obvious amusement. “I like those so much better than crying days.”
“I’m a person!” I yelled, glaring at him. “Do you get that? I’m not just a personal blood supply for you!”
His response shocked me. “I know,” he said matter–of–factly. “And if it makes a difference, I am sorry for what’s happened to you. For what will happen.”
I straightened in surprise and looked him in his freaky eyes as he started to pace the length of my tiny dungeon room. “If you’re really sorry you’ll let me go. Please. Just let me go home.”
He laughed. “You know I can’t do that. If I let you go home, you would ruin everything I’ve started here. All my hard work, gone, because of one silly girl?”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I begged.
“I let a girl go once. She ran straight home and told everyone about the vampires. The hunters came for us in their hundreds. They gunned us down until we were almost extinct.” His eyes grew dark. “If you ever go home, I’ll be right there, little girl. I’ll be killing your big strong boyfriend Jared before he can even take a breath. Then I’ll eat your mother, and the little blonde girl, too.”
“Then kill me!” I said angrily. “Because you can’t make me forget who I am!”
“It will be over for you soon enough,” he replied indifferently, pausing his pacing in front of me. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a pressed white handkerchief, offering it to me. “Here. Clean yourself up.”
I looked at the napkin in disgust and gathered all of the blood and saliva in my mouth, spitting it as forcefully as I could at him. It landed on his cheek and made a red trail down his face.
I immediately realized what a colossal mistake that was. I had just spit a mouthful of blood at a vampire.
Suddenly, it felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room, and I backed up against the wall with my hands held out in front of me.
“Wait -” I cried out–
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he growled, as he pinned me against the wall. I screamed as teeth ripped into my neck and my blood was hungrily, ragefully taken by force.
I had never really believed in the concept of people having a soul until the first time a vampire bit me. I hadn’t really thought about it at all, to be honest. When my dad died, that was it, as far as I was concerned. No afterlife. No heaven or hell. Just birth, life, and death. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But when Caleb started to take my blood, he was taking something else along with it. It’s hard to put into words, but it was like he was dragging pieces of my soul out along with my blood. Taking every ounce of energy within me, so that I was frozen, unable to speak or breathe or even think whole thoughts. Invisible fingers probed inside my chest, constricted my throat, twisted the chunk of meat inside my skull until it buzzed and screamed in agony.
I stopped fighting back almost immediately. I mean, it had only been a couple of days since dramatic–blood–loss–episode number one, and I very much doubted my body was anywhere near better when Caleb bit me. Besides, the word ‘bit’ sounds too nice, too neat. In reality, it was like a rabid dog had latched onto that hollow where neck and shoulder meet and proceeded to rip into my flesh.
I wanted to throw up, but I was frozen. He sucked greedily, again and again. The black dots that floated in front of my eyes said Too much. I was on the verge of blacking out when I was tossed to the floor like a rag doll.
I scurried backwards on my hands and heels, one hand pressed to my bleeding neck. I tilted my gaze so that I was looking up into the face of my attacker, my blood smeared across his face.
“When are you going to kill me?” I whispered to him.
He stared at me like one might stare at a cockroach twitching on the floor.
“Ryan!” he barked. Ryan appeared at his side. He must have been waiting in the hallway. His face remained blank.
“Sir?”
“Take this one back to your room.” He gave me another withering glare. “Let her sleep this off. Transfuse her, let her recover before we attempt the Turn. And Ryan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Strap this bitch down. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Of course.”
And with that, Caleb left. Ryan wordlessly hoisted me up, throwing my sore arm over his shoulders. I moaned.
“Sorry,” he muttered, gently disentangling himself from that side of my body and using my good arm instead.
“Wait!” I said. I grabbed my bundled up blanket, knowing that there was a crudely fashioned stake from the broken window frame hidden in its folds. I clutched it to my chest as we left the room, not really knowing why I’d taken it, but feeling like it might be the last hope I had left.
Draped over Ryan’s shoulder, I stumbled blindly next to him as we made our way up the hallway, in the opposite direction of Caleb’s lair. It took ages to get to Ryan’s room, especially when we had to navigate stairwells, lifts and even more impossibly long hallways. I had thought I’d had no idea where I was before, but now I was completely and utterly lost. We went up several flights of stairs, so I guessed we were somewhere high. Finally, though, we reached a large wooden door at the end of a long limestone corridor. Ryan disentangled himself from me, and I leaned on the cool wall for support. In theory, I could have run—I was completely unrestrained and Ryan was fumbling with a brass key—but I had nothing left inside of me. No energy, no fight, not even any hope except that the end was approaching quickly, and so I didn’t resist when Ryan took my wrist in his hand and led me through the open door.
I didn’t notice much of the room in my state of exhaustion. I just remember the feeling of a cool, damp breeze on my skin, despite the fact that we were deep inside Caleb’s building and there were no windows in view.
My head wobbled on my shoulders as I was led through a minimally decorated living room, then through a kitchen that was all stainless steel and dark marble. I stopped in my zombified state, looking around the kitchen in drunken wonder.
“You eat?” I asked, staring blankly at a package of bright red tomatoes on the counter.
Ryan smiled (what a change from yelling and putting taps in my brain) and nodded. “Yes, I eat.”
“But you’re a vampire,” I insisted groggily, rubbing my eyes like a little kid.
That made him laugh, but this time, there was no trace of malevolence lingering in his voice. He just sounded like a regular guy. “Now you believe in vampires?” he asked.
“I just almost got my throat ripped out,” I said morosely. “I’m a believer.”
“Come on.” He tugged my wrist and I followed in a bloodless stupor. We entered a small bedroom that actually looked to be the same dimensions and shape as my dungeon—even the door for the attached ensuite was in the same place, but this room had chocolate colored walls, an oak dresser and a matching four poster oak bed that seemed to take up every inch of spare space. Next to the bed was an IV pole hung with a bag of blood, condensation gleaming on the plastic packaging. When I saw it I froze, remembering the torture device I’d been hooked up to.
He must have felt me stiffen, and he immediately guessed what I was staring at.
“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “It’s just to make you feel better.”
“Better?” I said incredulously. “Aren’t you just going to kill me?”
We shared an uncomfortable silence as he tried to answer my question.
“Look,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re here or what’s going to happen.”
“He’s going to kill me,” I said flatly.
“Nobody is going to kill you,” he said firmly. “Honestly, I don’t lie. There’s no point me giving you false hope.”
“He won’t let me go,” I insisted.
He looked at the floor. “No, probably not.”
“I wish he would just kill me, then,” I whispered.
He laid me gently on his bed, carefully avoiding my neck, and arranged the blankets around me. I held tightly onto the blanket I’d carried with me, the one that contained my crudely fashioned wooden stake—and my last shot at freedom.
“I need to put this IV in,” he said apologetically. I looked away, barely registering the tiny prick as the needle entered a fresh vein in my arm.
“Sleep now,” he said, still with that persuasive tone, but gentler. I obeyed, settling back on the pillow, firmly clutching my blanket. Ryan sat in a plush leather chair beside the bed, fidgeting with the IV blood bag, and then the plastic tubing, until there was nothing left to fuss with.
I lay there for what seemed like ages, waiting for Ryan to relax beside me. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer. I shifted and felt him tense beside me immediately. Shit. This could take me a while. I thought of all the things a normal sleeping person would do. I sighed, I rolled over, I shifted, I even threw in a couple of snores for effect. My right hand reached into my blanket and curled around a splintered piece of wood I had fashioned into a crude stake by rubbing it along the concrete floor in my cell. It was now or never.
I cracked open one eye and saw Ryan, engrossed in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. How fitting. I would have made a dig about a vampire reading a Stephen King book, but since I was about to kill him, it would have to wait until he was staked.
I drew a deep breath, opened both eyes, sat bolt upright in bed and struck out with my stake.
I don’t know who was more surprised—me or him. Him, at the fact that he had just been taken down by a girl, or me, that I had managed to get the stake into his chest without getting murdered.
He gasped, looking down at his chest. “You … Bitch,” he said angrily, clearly still dazzled by my wicked ninja skills. I had hurt him, sure, but I didn’t think the stake was in far enough or at the right angle to kill him. Which meant time to fucking run. He opened his mouth to yell out, but a pathetic little cough came out instead.
I threw the covers off and stood clumsily, backing towards the door. The IV was still nestled in the crook of my arm. Not for long. I winced in anticipation and ripped the thing out of my arm, groaning at the sharp pain. My arm started dripping blood. Great. Focus, Mia. I looked back to Ryan. It was disgustingly satisfying to watch him writhe in pain as he tried to pull the stake out of his chest. I couldn’t believe I had missed his damned heart at such close range.
I opened the door, giving him one last glance. He kept gasping and thrashing about, but there was no time to knock him out or gag him. Or kill him, which was what he deserved. I had to leave. I hurried through the kitchen and lounge room, banging into cupboards and dragging myself along walls until I reached the door. Gingerly, I opened it, and stepped out of the apartment. I closed the door quietly, not liking the way I could hear Ryan’s muffled choking. Thankfully, the hallway appeared deserted. I moved fast, tiptoeing down the corridor towards what I hoped was a way outside. The hallway stretched for miles in both directions, and each time I reached an intersecting hallway, I took the brighter looking direction. The vampires seemed to avoid sunlight, and I figured the sunnier it was, the less chance I would have of running into one.
Unfortunately for me though, logic didn’t prevail. Through the maze of corridors, it only took a few moments before a vampire was walking down the hall, coming straight for me.
Shit! I wavered for a moment. I was now completely lost, and in no hurry to retrace my steps and try escaping in another direction. I could hide somewhere and wait for the guy to go, but Ryan was probably healed by now, and on his way to catch me and drag me back to my cell. I had to keep moving. I continued towards him as casually as possible, and then took the first intersecting corridor that presented itself.
“Hey!” he yelled straight away, and I froze. Don’t stop. Just get away. Vampires moved fast though, and by the time I started moving again, he was right with me. I turned to face him, and smiled nonchalantly. Fuck. “Hey, yourself!” I replied cheerily.
He eyed me warily, coming closer. “You’re the girl from New Jersey, right?”
I laughed breezily. Shit Shit Shit.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. I was supposed to have forgotten where I was from, after all.
The guy might have been undead, but thankfully he didn’t appear to be very smart.
“Hey, what’s that in your pocket?”
“Huh?” Damn it. He had seen the stake. He rushed at me, just in time for me to fish the stake out of my waistband and hold it in front of me and for Ryan to come around the corner. I couldn’t tell who was more pissed, and I didn’t want to hang around to ask. The dumb guy charged me, and I pointed the sharp part of the stake outwards. As he approached I thrust out with it, sidestepping him at the same time. Incredibly, he missed me and the stake altogether and smashed into the stained glass window directly behind me. No, he smashed through the window and kept going. I jumped, wincing as I heard him hit the ground. It sounded like we were pretty high up, judging by the timing of his fall and the ensuing splat.
Ryan blinked in disbelief, his bloodied shirt flapping in the new breeze created by the open window. I must have done some decent damage, because there was blood all over his shirt, soaking his jeans, and trailing behind him on the floor in neat little drops. I wished the wood splinters in his chest would become infected and cause him a long, traumatic death.
One could hope.
Ryan glared at me, and I smiled sweetly in response. Sunlight flooded into the hallway through the broken window, hurting my raw eyes. I hadn’t seen much more than a crack of sun through boarded–up windows in weeks. Instinctively I stepped backwards and up, hoisting myself onto the narrow window ledge that led outside, where dumb vamp had eaten concrete.
My elation turned to despair as Ryan came closer, effectively blocking off the other hallway in both directions. It left me trapped on the ledge with no place to go except back into the arms of my captor.
I stole a glance outside and was slammed by a wave of vertigo. Shit! I was at least four floors up, not one or two as I had foolishly hoped. And not only was there nothing soft to jump onto, there was also nothing to shimmy down but smooth limestone wall. I couldn’t even hope to land on Dumb Vamp to cushion a fall. He was already gone. Superhuman strength and all that, I suppose.
I was stuck.
“Come on” Ryan beckoned, coming at me with hands outstretched. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”
I glanced from him to the ground below. He was wrong. I did have somewhere to go. And I had no hope left inside me that I would escape, unless I took this beautiful sunlight and broken window and–
“Stay where you are or I’ll jump!” I yelled, thrusting my stake at the air in warning. Ryan smirked, coming closer.
“Don’t be stupid,” Ryan said, as his hand began to close around my wrist. “You won’t jump.”
Eat shit, motherfucker. I jumped.