I screamed louder than I ever had. “Gabriel!”
He looked up, but as he opened his mouth, two more of the Mass attacked, crushing him like football players.
I screamed until my voice crackled. “Gabriel! Get up!”
I was in the car so fast I didn’t remember walking the rest of the way there. Probably because I hadn’t.
A truck came to a screeching halt on the road as my other two escorts joined us in the car. Trapped in the backseat, I turned, kneeling to look out the back window, unable to see who jumped from the familiar rusty, cherry Ford. The occupants joined the clash with such enthusiasm I never saw a face, even though I searched wildly until we turned the corner, leaving me with nothing but my new tattooed friends.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The car ride was long, and since the Mass refused to play I Spy and I refused to play Punch Buggy, the only thing left to do was stare out the window. I wasn’t worried about Gabriel. The Mass might have taken him by surprise, but they were right. He was under the Members’ protection because, as far as I knew, they didn’t want him dead. It would have been nice if the same went for me as we rode further and further into nowhere.
You would think being the Cypher would have a few perks, like not getting killed and dumped in an unmarked grave. But Ellenore was running this show, so the Members probably didn’t even know what was happening. How did Ellenore gain power over the Mass? This is why I don’t play competitive games. Good sportsmanship is a myth. And no one was making me feel like a winner. My victory party was reduced to suffering and pain.
We pulled over on a stretch of road with no buildings in sight. The sky was clear and the moon high, so I could see very little, but just enough to be uncomfortable.
The Mass exited the vehicle simultaneously. One of them opened my door.
“Get out.”
“As long as you’re being so courteous.” But I didn’t get out. Jokes weren’t making it any easier. It was the end of our car trip. I couldn’t get out. Leaving the car suddenly meant death. Maybe I was already dead, even before they broke into my house the first time. But my body was breathing and moving and thinking.
“Get out!” He reached in and pried my fingers from the door like feathers. Vampires are strong like that.
One of the others came around to the driver’s side where we were wrestling. I wasn’t scared of his knife anymore. If anything, I preferred dying on the side of the road, where someone could find and identify my body, rather than being abandoned to rot alone, soulless. Well, there was always the possibility that my soul would come back if they killed me. I mean, it didn’t belong to Ellenore one hundred percent yet.
My muscles tensed in the struggle, but the bully finally picked me up, hauling me over his shoulder. And so we began our descent into a special type of hell. The woods were thick enough to cover a homicide, growing thicker every minute. The Mass had to make their own path in between the claustrophobic trees and blooming sticker bushes.
After roughly thirty minutes of bumping around on a murderer’s shoulder, we stopped. I was thoroughly lost at this point from multiple twists and turns.
We were in a small clearing, still in the thick of the woods, but there was a section with a slow-moving stream where the trees shied back, leaving a good fifty feet of open space. Mr. Kitchen remained on the outskirt by the trees. The other two were not so accommodating once I was tossed to the ground.
“Give me your jacket.”
“No.”
“Comply, or I will take it by force.” He smiled. It left my blood chilled.
“Try and take it,” I seethed between gritted teeth.
The burliest of them rushed forward using vampiric speed and knocked me off the ground. I should have given him the jacket, but it was the principal of the matter. They were going to kill me anyway. At least let me keep some self-respect, a single, weak shred of dignity.
I got up faster than my body wanted and jumped to the other side of the babbling water. He stared with bad, bad intentions. To say he was really pissed would have been a major understatement. Well, you know, I wasn’t too impressed, either. If I wasn’t going to live through this, making their job harder would be a going-away present to myself. A pony would have been better, though.
I found a rock the size of my palm and gripped it tight. My only weapon since I doubted my superhero discovery would prevail. Speeding toward me again, I back-pedaled to gain footing on higher ground, but he was too fast. I used all of my body weight and swung to meet him with a rocky punch to the nose, no pun intended. Bones crunched under the rock and the sensation traveled through my hand with a sick shudder.
When he held his face, I rolled across the ground to find the second psycho waiting eagerly for his turn. Unwilling to open that box of treats, I ran back to the nose-bleeder and kicked him in the core of his gut. He stood and motioned for the blade-wielder to back off.
Circling me the way a cat teases a mouse, I moved to keep him in view, still gripping the rock like a magic charm. Our dance lasted a small eternity.
His voice was husky and rough. “You’re not so tough.”
“I’m not the one bleeding.”
He didn’t like that. “You will be.”
All I saw was a blur and then sky. My hand involuntarily opened, allowing the rock to escape. The vampire sat on top of me, swinging his massive arms. After a few hits, my face felt like it was being peeled from my skull. A bad facelift, maybe. Miserably, he was undeterred when I raised my arms as shields. Each blow tore at the nerves, pulling one by one like the last measly pickings on a chicken wing.
I thought he was trying to beat me to death, but after a few more swings he stood up. Maybe he was just making me wonder which punch would be the last, the one to knock me from this world.
“Get up.”
My arms had actually gone numb. The throbbing scrutiny died away because my mind told me not to feel. The pain was leaving and that was the only thing that might get me through this.
I sat up and looked at the giant in front of me. He waited patiently. How nice. But before I could straighten to stand, he sucker punched my left cheek, sending me stumbling backward into a tree. I raised my right arm and held it over my face for a second. When I brought it back down, blood smeared my skin. It looked sickly under the muted moonlight.
Gruffly, I noted, “Nice shot.”
“I’ve been holding back.”
The other two stood their ground.
“Did they lose the coin toss?”
“We have our specialties. I enjoy the fight. He enjoys the kill.”
“And he enjoys the show. I get it.” So that’s why the third assailant took the best seat instead of getting involved. “Well, I’m glad this worked out so well. I’d hate to think someone felt left out.”
“You’re not as weak as I anticipated.”
“I eat a lot of carbs.”
“Good. I love the taste of a fighter.”
He began closing the desperate few feet between us. So my last activity involved being a meal for that thing? Unacceptable. When that precious gap disappeared, I threw my hands out to stop him. Stupid. My arms became trapped in a grotesque embrace as he embedded his large fangs into the meat where my shoulder and neck met. Teeth ground into flesh, a sound not dissimilar to salt in a grinder. A regular vampire bite wouldn’t have been half as malicious.
I felt pulling and ripping, the death grip of a great white, although this predator wasn’t gobbling my flesh by the mouthfuls. Nevertheless, my legs buckled, though we never fell to the ground. The sensors in my brain clicked to panic mode. The numbness was gone. Every nerve screamed, making me wonder if the cosmos had forsaken me. I was a giant circuit board of damnation, wanting nothing more than to pass out. In fact, I prayed to pass out.
So this was my death. It was lonely, void. It was like being suspended.
As my brain prepared for a permanent retirement, my heart retaliated. What was I doing? I was the Cyphe
r. The Mass made me feel so helpless, so dead, so nowhere that they made me forget who I was. I was the Cypher, and I had the power to do something, to react.
My hands moved tightly between our bodies. They slid over his chest to that spot right next to the heart. Hypnotized by the blood and pain, he didn’t even notice. With all of my strength and concentration, I blocked the pain and coerced his polluted soul. It fought, but not hard enough. The vampire’s soul hopped right in, leaving him in that weird suspension. I could keep him there as long as I hung onto the soul. His teeth released my flesh as he dropped to the ground.
I couldn’t help but brag, “I was holding back, too.”
Instantly his soul poured out so much information, so many codes of the Mass, so many secrets that I gasped for air. The Mass were old and their souls had a lot to say, but I didn’t expect the uncensored outpouring. I fell to my knees, still hovering over the sleeping man, when footsteps approached from behind. The second vampire wanted me to hear him coming, to let the fear build.
A sharp blade slid between two ribs. The vampire, who was no longer at the top of my BFF list, twisted the knife deeper, using it like a skewer to toss me aside. I rolled down a small incline, forced to release the soul. There was no chance to command otherwise.
The trio walked over, giving me a terrific view of their muddy shoes. Almost unwilling to recount what I saw next as fact, I witnessed one of the burly vamps pull a tree right out of the earth and toss it aside like a broken pencil. A grown tree with a diameter no smaller than six feet! The noise echoed past the other trees like a final death cry, proof that the gangly roots and robust trunk had enough life to mourn. Such a feat left a gaping, jagged hole that, unlike the tree, I refused to pity. The depth of the devastation was strikingly severe, even for such a large tree.
Hands grabbed my limp body until it met the earthly elements below with a thud. I begged silently for strength to climb out of the pit before they successfully collapsed the sides. I failed, shielding my face from the dirt and rubble as it careened down upon me.
This was my burial. I was still breathing, but they had called the time of death. Over and out.
Everything was in slow motion. I could feel every grain of dirt, every stone, every earthworm, every particle that used to belong to something bigger. My limbs sank between the broken, jutting roots, my left half finding enough moisture to wrinkle the skin.
Every muscle spasmed, and my neck throbbed to an ancient tribal beat. The bite would have left a nasty scar. Gabriel’s bite would have been gone the next evening. Would have... There wasn’t room for vanity in death. There would be no body for a funeral anyway, because no one would find me. And no one would look for me, or mourn, because I hadn’t taken the time to love.
At last, they were done. In between the rocks over my face, I could hear them retreat farther until they no longer existed in my narrowing world.
This is where I should have dug myself out and made a dash to safety, having a great story to tell anyone who would listen. People spend a lot of time telling themselves how they will react in hypothetical situations. Well, my situation wasn’t hypothetical. My situation was that I’d been beaten, bitten, stabbed, and buried alive by Hell’s Three Stooges. And there was no fight left. I wanted to. My heart was crying out, Work! It knew I didn’t want to meet death, but every other part of me was INOP, AWOL, unplugged.
My eyes closed.
Just as I awoke, hearing the strange sounds of the forest, something caught my attention: The crunching of leaves. Footsteps! They grew closer at a quickening pace, stopping next to the pile. I strained to hear the voices. Male. The Mass? It didn’t matter. I was turned off. My voice didn’t work. My limbs were pinned. When hope was about to flee, the sliding of rocks and earth jolted my heart. Little by little, the pressure lessened.
After a small lifetime, air passed over my stifled, near-lifeless body as I was turned over. It was Gabriel and Seth. They looked relieved until my face was exposed. When the mud and moss were wiped away, their joyful expressions immediately died from fright. I could only imagine the monster they were looking at. The tightness of stretched skin and lack of movement told me that my face was beyond swollen.
Dried blood flaked away when they grabbed my arms. Gently, they worked to stand me up. It was a painful battle, but I tried to help as much as I was able. They had come. Hope had been smothered, but they’d come for me. Not for a funeral or lifeless body, but for me, breathing and wanting life. Where had my faith gone?
Seth tried to smile. He was happy that I was alive. Gabriel looked pissed. He’d tried not to let the Mass get to us, but it hadn’t been good enough. That’s what he was thinking. Don’t! I wanted him to blame me. It had been me who led us from safety into a trap. But his posture told me he wasn’t ready to share the blame yet, so I didn’t press it. There would be a better time to apologize, like after my jaw could move again.
Seth took my left hand in his and placed his right on my elbow. Ever so tenderly, he walked me out of the woods. Gabriel stayed busy clearing a path ahead of us so I didn’t risk stumbling. And then, the oddest realization dawned: It was daylight. Not high noon or anything, but the sun was definitely up. How could they be out in the sun? Under the canopy of the trees they might have been safe from direct rays, but how did my vampiric rescuers make it from the sun to the shade?
And then I really woke up.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was still immobilized in the makeshift tomb. My dreamy rescue had been so real I felt tears well up and terror of abandonment set in. No one was coming to get me. No one could dig me out because I was nowhere. In an unmarked grave, tears burned my skin as they sank into the moist earth. It’s funny how everything in life cycles. My skin was so damp from the moisture, I could imagine the tears being soaked right back into my pores, only to be cried back out into the water to maintain the cycle.
Every time my lungs inhaled and exhaled, a rasp escaped my throat. And my arms were cramped from shielding my face. The darkness was claustrophobic. I wanted to feel the sun so badly. And as I wished to be rescued to bask in the warmth, my will stirred from its grave slumber.
Why was I waiting for someone to save me? I was the former Myranda Clyne, the current Ell Clyne. I was the Cypher. I had saved myself from the Mass with my own power. Well, I postponed my death, and that counted for something. It had to. I couldn’t let myself go so easily. There was no excuse to passively fade from this world, especially without my soul. Where would I go without a soul?
Slowly, my hands unfolded and started pushing. There wasn’t much movement at first, but I figured it wasn’t a race. I focused on the task at hand, pushing pockets of earth loose. Painfully slow, I made progress. Sometimes it took one minute to shift the debris; sometimes it took up to ten. My effort sped up once I was able to scoot from side to side.
Hours passed. Finally, however, I hoisted myself up and rolled onto my back around mid-day. A light breeze flowed over my broken body. My dream hadn’t been a complete lie. The skin on my face tightened under the scrutiny of the air. My arms were bloody, covered in bruises. The bite was untouchable. And blood oozed from my ribs. At least I could still count on my inner beauty.
Walking wasn’t too difficult. Pushing the dirt back in the hole first in case anyone cared to check, I followed the stream. Only a few minutes into the escapade, I remembered my cell phone in the side pocket of my jeans. Thankfully, it wasn’t in my confiscated jacket.
Amusing fact about cell phones: most people buy them for peace of mind in case something bad happens. What people fail to grasp is that cell phones are unreliable little pishers. I was standing in a field at least two hours away from where I’d started, staring at one bar. One bar!
I tried to call Gabriel every twenty minutes, though I wondered if he was alive to answer. Sometimes it would ring once or twice then cut out. I was hopeful the Mass hadn’t killed him. It was daylight, so maybe he was sleeping off the damage from the fight. Hopef
ully my signal and his consciousness would collide sooner than later.
While scanning for more bars, I found myself wondering why the Mass took my jacket. Was it a memento for Ellenore, to show the job had been done? But why would she try to kill me? I was pretty sure I had to be present for the ceremony, or they could have already done it. If I died first, I might claim my soul in death and she would be left with nothing. Unless they weren’t really trying to kill me.
They’d been detaining me, not killing me—not on purpose anyway. But they had wanted to kill me. Would have taken pleasure in it. I could feel that. I saw it when I took the one’s soul. So they meant to come back for me. Well, I had to get away before that.
My vision had blurred some time in the woods. Too much blood loss. I gave myself one good hour before I took a permanent dirt nap.
The phone rang, but it cut off before I could say anything. Forcing my feet onward, I walked up to an abandoned house where the phone wavered between four and five bars. When it rang again, I answered immediately with a scratchy, “Hello?”
“Ell?” The voice was very relieved, and very southern.
“Danny?” Maybe I had finally started to hallucinate.
“Yeah. Where the hell are you?”
“Oh, just taking a stroll through God’s country.”
“Well, are ya’ done yet?”
That brought a smile to my swollen lips. “Sure. I’d hate to overstay my welcome.”
Maybe he heard the small lisp, but he asked, “Are you hurt?”
Not wanting to answer his question, I examined the house. It was one story with broken windows and a bird’s nest sticking out of the gutter. The paint was flaked in many places, showing older paint. “I’m by a house. It looks... It used to be orange, I think... Pretty.” I was trying to make sense as I talked, but it was getting harder.
Danny tried to remain calm as he asked, “Where are you?”
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