by Thea Dane
Violetta leaned forward to look at the screen. “You hacked into their private file share. Good job.”
“Let’s see what that image is you took.” Natasha typed in the code again. This time, it went straight to the page. She stared at it, frowning. “I want to call it a blueprint, but it has to be something else.”
“I see why you call it a blueprint. The more I look at it, the more it reminds me of the rail map.”
Natasha snapped her fingers. “That’s it.”
“A rail map?”
“No, but look at the shape of the image. Now watch this.” Natasha brought up another screen, typed in a normal web address, and brought up an aerial view of Briar City. “Now tell me what you see.”
Violetta recognized it. “Wow, it’s the shape of the city. The framework.”
“Looks like the vampires are mapping out the city from underground. All those lines interconnect through sewers and subway tunnels.” Her friend brought up more maps of the rail line and the city sewer system.
“I wonder what the vampires are doing. Lee obviously has a stake in it. Sorry, no pun intended.”
Natasha groaned. “I’ll take a free drink instead of a joke for my troubles.”
“No problem.” Violetta studied the framework. “I’m going to see what’s caught the vampires’ interest down below the city, Nat. Want to come with me?”
“The vampires haven’t interfered with the pack in a while. I’m not going to mess up the truce.”
“I can respect that.”
Natasha cleared the computer screen. “You shouldn’t go underground, either. You don’t know what Desmond has the vampires building down there.”
“I don’t know. You’re right.”
“V, promise me you won’t try to find out.”
Violetta patted her friend on the shoulder. “I’ll meet you later for that drink. Thanks again, Nat.” She left the store before her friend could stop her.
VIOLETTA USED THE INFORMATION she got from Natasha to go underground after midnight. First she started on the subway tunnels and took the train to the area closest to the entertainment district. From there, she got off and traveled on foot until she was unable to use the walkways. She turned around the corner and ventured into tunnels leading to the sewer area. Flashlight in hand, she glanced at the map on her phone. According to it, she was going down another path that ended up being about a hundred yards long.
She arrived at a new area. It was swept clean. Someone was working down here right below Briar City Theater. What were the vampires building?
She kept following the tunnel, on the alert in case anyone should be around. She had her slayer kit in her backpack. The dagger and stake were connected to her belt. She massaged the back of her neck as traces of vampiric energy surrounded her. They were here recently.
A draft of wind touched her face. Was it coming from beyond the tunnel? She kept going until the tunnel ended and she stepped out in a larger open space.
The stonework was gone, replaced by dirt floor circular pit. There was a half constructed fence being enveloped in a semicircle. It reminded her of an arena. What in the world was Lee doing with this thing?
A pinprick sensation danced along her neck. There was an active vampire close by. Her muscles tensed. She turned around and came face to face with a six foot pale-haired male. He glared at her with ice cold blue eyes. His lips peeled back to reveal white fangs.
She dropped the flashlight and raised her arms just as he charged at her. She blocked the first attack. With his arms still swinging, Violeta used his momentum to catch him by the shoulder and shove him to one side. The force sent him stumbling forward. He caught himself against the fence and regained his footing. She delivered a swift kick to his chest that sent him rearing back again. She pulled the silver knife from her belt.
“Slayer bitch.” He extended his fangs fully.
“What are you guarding? What’s this tunnel for?”
“Why would I tell you?” He lunged at her. Violetta jumped back but he caught her hands. She tried to pull away, but he had more upper-body strength. He yanked her forward and bit down hard, his fangs tearing through the sleeve of her jacket and piercing her forearm.
The bite hurt like hell and burned like fire. Violetta had the knife in her other hand. She sliced across his throat. Blood splattered across his chest and hers. He gurgled.
While he was subdued, she yanked the wooden stake from her belt and drove it through his chest. The vampire fell to the ground. She used her foot to drive the stake even further through his heart. The vampire guard convulsed in a pool of his dark blood. Clutching her arm, she stood over him and watched as the final death throes took over and he lay still.
That one was close. All the traces of old vampire energy almost blinded her to his active energy. If she hadn’t turned around, she might have gotten more than just a bite to the arm.
She couldn’t just leave the body here for other humans to discover. This was a vampire, plus she may have left her fingerprints on him when she defended herself. Violetta removed her backpack to see if she had some acid in her kit to dissolve the front of his leather jacket where she grabbed him.
Pain shot from her forearm to her shoulder and then in the side of her neck. She doubled over and gasped. Poison. He was using a form vampires utilized for paralyzing their prey. She needed the antidote now more than she needed to remove her fingerprints from his jacket.
She looked for the antidote in her kit but couldn’t find the vial. “Shit.” She didn’t have much time before the poison would start reacting to other parts of her body. Violetta glanced at the fallen vampire. She had to leave him as is or risk staying there dead with him in the tunnel.
Staggering backwards, she picked up her flashlight and ran the way she came through the tunnel to go back to the subway station. The trip to the nearest platform seemed to take hours to reach. She bent over, catching her breath while waiting for the train coming up the track.
The doors to the train car opened. She stepped in, inhaling recycled air from the vents and the smell of unwashed bodies, sour beer, and cigarettes. She counted six people on the train. Half were decked out in maintenance uniforms or nurse’s scrubs, ready for the early Monday morning shift. The others looked like stragglers who got kicked out of a bar for starting a fight. Clutching her bloodied arm, she stumbled past the handful of people. A guy in a janitor’s jumpsuit swept his gaze over her as she passed and frowned when he saw her muddy jeans and shoes. Violetta could smell sewer on herself. Another guy scooted away from her and turned his face to the wall.
“You alright, Miss?” The nurse clutched the blue hem of her scrubs while asking the question. She was concerned but probably afraid of getting her head chewed off for asking.
Violetta gave her a nod. The nurse glanced at the droplets of sweat beading on her head, shrugged, and returned to a game on her phone. Violetta dragged herself to the back of the train car and leaned against the wall while the train moved forward. Her arm burned as though she dipped it in acid. When the others eventually lost interest and turned away, she inspected the wound. The bite marks were swollen. The infection was setting in quick. Already she could feel the poison seeping through her veins and affecting her reflexes. She shut her eyes as pain coursed through her arm and the left side of her body.
The train made one stop before it pulled into the Green Knoll station of the entertainment district. When everyone else got off, she staggered out and hoisted herself up the stairs to get to street level.
Her vision blurred on the last three steps. She stumbled onto her hands and knees, unable to catch herself on the railing. Get your butt up. You can’t die here. She coached herself to her feet, even though she was barely able to feel them. Nat’s shop was across the street. Come on. Only a few more steps.
She shuffled along the worn asphalt like a zombie on downers until she reached the door of the shop. She beat her fist against the metal frame. “Nat,” she called he
r friend’s name. Her shout echoed along the empty street. “Open up. Please.”
Her arm and chest were on fire. She felt a thousand pinpricks in her lungs when she inhaled. Each breath felt like inhaling glass. “Na—” She couldn’t finish. Her legs went numb and she fell to the ground.
Her vision blurred again before the muffled sound of a latch snapping back from the door reached her ears. She looked up and saw two people standing over her. She blinked and the image became one person.
“Jesus, V. What happened?” Nat’s alarmed voice resounded above her head.
Violetta tried to move her tongue to answer but it was plastered to the roof of her dry mouth. Instead, she grunted and jerked her left arm. The resulting pain sent a scream welling up in her throat.
“Oh, no. Shut up and be still.”
The pain kept coming. She closed her eyes as the tears welled behind her lids. She felt pressure on her ankles. Then her body started moving. She opened her eyes again to see the door to the shop was open and her legs were halfway inside. Nat continued to drag her inside, her friend’s werewolf shifter strength belying her small build.
Once she got the door closed, Nat crouched beside Violetta. Her eyes locked onto the arm wound. “Poison bite. That Bloodbound gang’s terrorizing the town with that new drug. I gotta get the antidote. Wait there.”
Where the heck am I going to go? Violetta thought in response as Nat stepped over her body. Her mouth was bone dry and her tongue was a useless lead slab.
She stared up at the ceiling. The corners of it began to blur and fade. Her fingertips scraped against the hardwood floor. Then she lost feeling in them, too. One by one, her senses started to slip away.
Then her upper arm stung from a sharp jab of a needle. It sank deep within skin and muscle. Violetta yelped in pain. Her vision cleared to see Nat injecting a gold liquid through a syringe.
“Just in time.” Nat finished dispensing the antidote. She removed the needle none too gently. “One minute longer and you would’ve been slayer meat.”
The antidote chugged through Violetta’s veins. She could feel its slow, unpleasant burn working. It hurt almost as much, if not more, than the vampire poison. But she could move her tongue and lips to speak. “Thanks, Nat.”
Her friend didn’t look happy to be of help. She sat back on her haunches. “You went underground to investigate the vampire tunnel network, didn’t you?”
Violetta sat up on her elbows. The left arm still hurt like the devil, but at least it was no longer on fire. “I may have gone on a Briar City underground tour.”
A growl slipped from her friend’s throat. “Don’t you know you could’ve gotten killed? You almost did.”
“I know. A vampire guard tried to sneak up behind me. He had the poison bite, but I managed to kill him.”
“Not before he sank his fangs into you. Let’s have another look at the bite.”
She peeled back the ripped fabric of her coat and shirt on her arm. The two bite marks weren’t swollen anymore, but the area surrounding them was still bruised. It would be days, maybe even a week, before it faded. “What do you think? I’ll live, right?”
“If I don’t kill you first. You’re so reckless, V.”
“Sorry to scare you.”
Nat rolled her eyes. “Like that’s a real apology.”
“I have to do this.”
“Why? Is revenge worth getting killed over?”
“It’s part of the slayer code.” Violetta repeated the words her aunt and uncle drilled into her head for years whenever she questioned their line of work and methods. Today, for the first time, as she stared at the dried blood on her arm, those words seemed hollow. If she had died tonight, would her brother have truly been happy to know it was because she was seeking vengeance for him?
Nat got up and went to the mixing counter in the shop. She came back with a damp towel. “I hope all your snooping and getting bitten was worth it.”
Violetta caught the towel when she threw it. “One tunnel is beneath the theater. That’s where Lee’s going to have his coronation, I think. Now I need to find out why they need a tunnel.”
“Guess you’ll have to find a way to get the answer out of Desmond when you go to work this morning.”
“Oh, no. Morning.” Violetta scrambled to her feet. She regretted the hasty action as soon as her head spun. Her limbs had feeling in them, but were still heavy.
“What’s so bad about morning? If you’re still not feeling well in a couple hours, just call in sick.”
“I’m talking about the vampire I left underground. The trains are going to start running near that area this morning. People will find his body. Lee will hear about it. I have to go back and hide the body.”
“The hell you will.” Nat blocked the door. “If you encountered one vampire, there are more down there. They had to have found his body by now. If you go back, they’d swarm on you like vultures on two-day old roadkill.”
Violetta fumbled her way across the room and washed her bloody hands in the sink. “They can do it, anyway, if I don’t cover my ass.”
“Did you leave anything behind?”
“Nothing but the stake. But it can’t be traced back to me. It’s standard cedar and I used the neutralizing spray to hide my scent. But what if I left footprints? Look how muddy my shoes are.”
“Was the area muddy?”
Violetta struggled to remember. “I don’t know. After I realized I didn’t have the antidote, all I could think about was rushing to get here. I stumbled a few times and got dirty.”
“Maybe you lucked out, then. Either way, you can’t go down there again tonight.”
Violetta checked out at her ragged appearance in the mirror. Her friend was right. With her reflexes and senses slowed, she’d be fodder for the vampires. “This can’t happen again. How much do you charge for the antidote? I’ll buy a couple more doses.”
“That was the last dose. I have to make more when new supplies come in from Europe.”
“Crap.” That made her job so much more dangerous.
“You look like a trainwreck. You want to crash here for a bit?”
“I can’t. I have to go home and work on a report for Lee. It’s on the laptop in my apartment.”
“I’ll call you an Uber, then.”
As Nat whipped out her phone, Violetta finished making herself look a little less frightening for the Uber driver.
FORTY MINUTES LATER, the driver dropped her off in front of her apartment building. Violetta clutched her sore, bandaged arm as she climbed the stairs to her apartment door. The light bulb above the frame had gone out, making it next to impossible to locate the keyhole in the doorknob. Her roommate’s bass-heavy trap music filtered outside. The doorframe rattled in time to the music. The thump-thump of the beat matched the pulsing headache in her temples. She needed two ibuprofen, a shot of vodka, and about nine hours of solid sleep. The extended sleep wasn’t happening since she had to complete her progress report on the Christmas fundraising gala.
She fumbled to find the key to open her apartment door. Her knuckles still hurt from fighting that vampire. The pain made her fingers shaky and clumsy. She dropped the keychain onto the cement floor. “Goodness.” She bent down to pick it up. Her head pounded in retaliation for the sudden movement. Was it a side effect of Natasha’s antidote or the vampire smackdown she endured?
Violetta finally got the door open. The music blared from the subwoofers and pulsed in her chest. Her roommate saw her cover her ears. Debbie jumped up from the couch where she was seated with some fuckboy with his Ravens jersey halfway up his chest. He yanked it down when he realized they were being interrupted.
Debbie turned the music off. “I thought you were asleep in your room.”
“I had to work Sunday night.” Violetta held her sore arm.
“You look like shit.”
The guy in the Ravens jersey got up. “I’d better head out. Gotta get ready for class.”
“
You don’t have to leave.” Violetta wanted him to stay and continue keeping her roommate company. The last thing she wanted to do was explain why she was covered in dirt and smelled like musty linen and random herbs growing out of a sewer. “I’m going to my room.”
“No, it’s cool.” The guy nodded to her roommate before he walked past. Violetta saw him wrinkle his nose. She heard the door open and close behind her.
“Thanks for ruining things.” Her sexually frustrated roommate shot her an angry look before she went to lock the door.
“He could’ve stayed. I said I was going to my room.”
“Who wants to stay over when your roommate stumbles in, looking like she got the wrong end of a drug deal? Seriously, why are your clothes and hair so dirty?”
Violetta felt dizzy. Either another side effect of the antidote or her underground brawl. “I was helping a friend move some stuff out of her parents’ storage shed.”
“After work? Okay, so what were you helping her move, dead animals?” Her roommate waved her hand in front of her nose.
“Her parents live outside the city. Kinda rural. That’s why it took me so long to get back home. Anyway, I’m going to get cleaned up and go to bed.” Violetta snagged a bottled water from the pack on the kitchen counter and made a beeline for her room down the hall.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
Violetta looked over her shoulder and instantly regretted the motion. It almost threw her off balance. “I just need a hot shower and a few good hours of sleep. See you later.”
As soon as she got into her room and closed the door, she removed her dirty clothes. She discovered a medium velocity blood splatter on her shirt collar from where she staked the vampire. It had dried to a reddish brown and blended in with the rust color of the fabric. She tossed it in the clothes hamper, thankful Debbie and her friend didn’t see it.
She jumped in the shower. The hot water made her skin sting where the vampire’s sharp fingernails lacerated the surface of her hands. She struggled to keep the bandage on her arm from getting wet. She was not looking forward to sleeping with the stinky muddy green paste on her arm, but according to Nat, it was the only thing that would quickly heal the bite marks.