Fortunately, the scraps are too dim-witted to recognize me as a vampire. A few mutter about ‘stocking the fridge’ as they disperse. Two head out the entry tunnel while the rest go down the passage that leads deeper into the cavern.
Their clothes don’t look out of style, though they all have a shabby, homeless air about them, like they’d been living in the same outfit for months. No surprise there, since I doubt they have enough brain left to process the concept of dirty laundry. Whatever they had on when that big guy killed them is theirs for the rest of their short unlife. I don’t like that this guy hasn’t destroyed them. Both Dalton and Aurélie agreed on that one point: Scraps should be put down. That tells me this guy’s pretty dark and probably likes having minions.
I grab the bars and keep my head bowed, pretending to be a terrified mortal. Through a curtain of my hair, I peer at the tunnel where a few of the scraps surround the big guy. Like some sort of bad cartoon henchmen, they brag about ‘finding more food’ as if their master hadn’t watched the whole thing.
While he’s distracted by his sycophants, I stare at him long enough to get a sense that he is, in fact, a vampire… and I don’t recognize the ‘feel’ of his bloodline. I’ve met a couple Furies already, one of whom was a rather normal-looking woman. Dante wasn’t terribly huge either in a muscular sense. Not like this guy. He’s beyond ridiculous. His biceps are bigger than my thighs, and he’s probably close to seven feet tall. All he needs is fur pants and a battleax and he’d make a perfect cover for a fantasy barbarian novel.
Yeah… I’m gonna let that guy continue believing I’m mortal. I don’t want him thinking I’m a threat, nor do I want to wind up his concubine or something. Dude might see a female vampire who’s not a Scrap and decide I’m his. Maybe expecting the worst of him like that is a tad unfair, but he looks so much like Gonad the Conqueror it’s hard not to think along those lines. And he did have his minions put me in a cell.
Grr. Also, that’s twice. The last time I ran into other vampires, I wound up in a cage, too.
What the hell is it with vampires and dungeons? At least this time I’m not stuck waiting hours for the sun to go down.
“Dude, you were right,” whispers Cody. She is a—”
I clamp a hand over his mouth and pull his head around to make eye contact. If that big bastard realizes I’m a vampire, he’s going to tear me to pieces.
Cody blinks in shock at my telepathic message, then thinks, Aren’t you like super strong and stuff?
Compared to normal people? Yes. I twist his head so he looks at the enormous dude in the tunnel for a few seconds. Compared to that monster? No.
Ben glances at us. “What are you two doing?”
I take my hand away from Cody’s mouth. “Just getting on the same page.”
“What do we do now?” whispers Cody.
“We’re gonna die,” mutters Ben. “Sorry. This is my fault for being stupid.”
“Chill out.” I whisper. “We just need to wait.”
“Waiting is exactly what we can’t do.” Ben flails. “We have to get out before they come back to tear us apart.” He pauses. “Hey, how did you get in here?”
“We walked.”
Ben points. “No, I mean the secret tunnel.”
“How did you make it in here?” asks Cody.
“I didn’t. I was out in the pink room and they jumped me.”
“Secret button on the wall,” I whisper. “Shh. Just wait.”
The boys stare at me in disbelief, Ben clearly the more upset of the pair. I look around at the cell, the top about ten feet off the ground. No benches or anything else inside, not even a chamber pot. I’m not at all interested in learning what the stains on the floor are. Based on the bars overhead, I’m pretty sure this is a free-standing box, but the floor is smooth rock. Either this cage has been here so long that more sediment poured in to cover the bottom, or it somehow sank into the rock the way my finger did at the switch.
I’ve caught the occasional rumor that the Academics can do weird things that basically amount to magic, and temporarily liquefying stone pretty much counts as magic. Part of my brain wants to laugh and reject the idea outright, but I once felt the same way about vampires.
“He’s leaving,” whispers Ben.
I wait for the big dude and his Scraps to completely disappear down the interior tunnel.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Now, we leave.”
15
An Unfortunate Escape
Both brothers blink at me.
“Leave? Just like that?” asks Ben. “I’ve been trying to get out of here for over an hour.”
I jump up and hang off the ceiling bars. After a few seconds’ concentration on wanting to be stronger, I mule-kick the door with both feet and it flies open with a tremendous clang against the cage.
“Guess you’re not doing subtle,” mutters Cody.
“Much easier to break from inside,” I whisper after dropping back to stand.
“Holy shit,” mutters Ben, pulling a stake out of his coat. “She is a vampire!”
He goes to lunge at me, but I swipe the stick out of his hand so fast I’m basically taking it away from a statue.
“I swear, if you do that again…”
“Incoming!” says Cody.
The Scraps spill out from the inner corridor, heading for us. One guy with butt-long dreads dashes way ahead of the group. He springs at me, but I sidestep and hammer the crude stake into his chest. Thick, cold blood that stinks of rot sprays over my hand. He keeps flailing, but I swing him around and hold him up by one hand on his back, one hand on the stake like I’m showing off a science project to the boys. The scrap keeps trying to bite my face, but can’t overpower me.
“And besides, stakes don’t work.”
Three more Scraps sprint up the dais toward the cage. I hurl the staked guy at them, knocking all four to the ground in a moaning heap.
“Run! Now!” I whisper-shout.
The other two Scraps, a skinny chick and a dude with lime green hair, charge out of the entry tunnel, heading at me.
Ugh.
I catch the woman with a right hook that leaves her seeing stars for a second. The guy tries to claw me, but I’m way faster. He swings so hard at empty air, the momentum pulls him over sideways and he lands on his face. Cody and Ben scramble to catch up, running from the group of four. Dreadlock hasn’t even bothered pulling the stake out.
Lime-hair ignores me and pounces on Ben, growling, fangs out.
“Grr!” I spring at him with a flying tackle, sinking my claws into his shoulders.
Pain makes him release Ben, who bounces away in a logroll across the floor. I wind up kneeling on top of Lime-hair, and plunge my claw-tipped fingers into his throat once we stop sliding. Cody stands rigid, staring in shock.
With a grunt of exertion, I rip his head off and throw it across the chamber. It bounces with a hollow coconut-like thok and rolls out of sight. The skinny woman grabs me from behind and drags me off the headless body, which sits up and grabs at the air. At the sight of blood burbling up from the neck stump, Ben lets off a scream worthy of Sophia having a nightmare.
Damn, Scrap blood stinks… like carrion or liquid death or pure distilled evil. It’s even worse than Dad’s socks.
I spin and drive my left knee into the chick’s side with enough force to catapult her across the chamber. She crashes into the wall like twenty feet away and flops to the ground.
The headless guy totters off in search of his head.
Despite us being closer to the way out, Ben shrieks and dashes away in a panic—heading deeper into the place. The other female scrap, a fortyish woman with a prematurely grey ponytail, grabs Cody from behind in a bear hug and lifts him off the ground.
For two seconds, I stare helplessly back and forth between the brothers, not sure which way to go. Since Cody’s right here, I launch myself at the scrap and grab her by the ponytail. She abandons her grip on the boy, flailing as I wheel her a
round and around. Seconds after her feet go airborne, she careens off, leaving me holding a ponytail, most of her hair, and a patch of scalp.
Oh. Eww. I squeal like a little girl stepping barefoot in dog poo and fling it aside.
Damn. That’s nasty.
Two male Scraps rush at me from opposite sides. I drop to the ground, letting them collide face first. After rolling back to my feet, I shred at them with my claws, throwing fetid blood everywhere. They shriek and howl in agony, shying away. Evidently, it finally clicked with their tapioca brains that I’m a vampire.
I grab Cody’s wrist and drag him up to a sprint for the tunnel Ben disappeared into. It weaves around in a triple S-curve before straightening (somewhat) into a passage with multiple offshoots. Gagging in Ben’s voice leads me to the second opening on the left side. I round the corner at a full run and nearly crash into him.
He’s stopped short at the entrance of a smallish room containing the decaying remains of thirty or so corpses. Cody clamps a hand over his mouth and starts heaving. I grab his other hand, as well as Ben’s, and run back out. Cody hurls on the run, barely managing to stay on his feet.
At snarling and growling from the right, I veer left, following the cave around in a gradual rightward arc. At every opening, I pause to look, hoping that this guy is smart enough to have chosen a lair with a back way out. Even a vampire has to dislike being trapped in a space with one way in, right?
“Where are you going?” rasps Cody.
“Umm… away from the big guy.”
“This isn’t the way out,” says Ben.
“No kidding.” I smirk. “If you two were in a boy band, it would be called Wrong Direction.”
Cody chuckles despite looking terrified.
“We can’t go that way.” Ben points at the actual exit.
“I’m hoping he’s got another way out. Even if it’s straight up.”
The constant scuffle and snarl of Scraps chasing us provides the brothers enough motivation that I don’t need to keep dragging them along. A few turns later, an opening on the left catches my eye for being much larger than any of the other passages. I head in, finding a sharp corner to the left only a few feet later. The tunnel curves back to the right and becomes a near-vertical slope for about nine feet.
Easy enough to jump and climb, even without flying.
I pull myself up over the ledge, get to my feet, and… stop short at the last thing I expected to find in a cavern.
An ornate bedchamber.
A carved lion face dominates the headboard of a massive bed in the far right corner of a squarish room. Thick rugs of red and purple cover the floor. Bookshelves stand wherever they fit between the stalagmites jutting up from the floor. Papers litter the surface of a large writing desk straight ahead against the rear wall, along with multiple ink jars and actual quills.
The far left corner extends into a sub-chamber with a downward-sloping floor and a rounded end with a wooden door in the middle. Two shelves on either side of that door hold an assortment of boxes, a couple backpacks, and some bundles of fabric.
“Whoa,” whispers Ben at my right.
Cody climbs up and stands to my left. “Holy crap. Hey, the uglies aren’t following us in here.”
“Good,” says Ben.
“Not good,” I mutter. “The only reason they wouldn’t come in here is if they’re either afraid or were commanded not to. This is big boy’s room.”
Ben leans around me, literally talking behind my back. “Is she gonna kill us.”
“No, dumbass,” says Cody.
I turn a one-eighty. “We shouldn’t be in here.”
“Uhh.” Cody gestures at the tunnel. “Those other vampires are in the way. We’re kinda trapped.”
“Damn.” I spin in place, considering for a few seconds, then dash across the room and down the hill into the second chamber. “This might be the back door I was hoping for… though I didn’t expect a literal door.”
“Maybe it’s an old mine shaft?” asks Cody, hurrying along behind me.
Ben follows walking backward, staring at the way we came in.
I stop by the door, which looks more like it belongs inside some country manor house than deep in a cavern. “Oh, this is too weird. How old do vampires have to be before they go insane?”
“Eccentric,” says Cody. “Rich people don’t go insane, they become eccentric.”
“What makes you think he’s rich? He lives in a cave.”
“Did you see that bedroom?”
“Okay, good point. Still, why would he be out here?”
Ben gulps. “Probably because he likes killing people too much to stay in civilization. Picking off tourists is like easier or something.”
“But no one said anything about disappearances. It’s not on the news,” I whisper.
“Media control.” Cody shakes his head. “It might not even be the vampire doing anything. If word got out they had a serial killer living in the caves, tourists would stop coming. It would cost the state too much money so they don’t let anyone talk about it.”
I give him the side eye. “Conspiracy much?”
“Did you hear about anything in the news?” asks Cody.
“No.”
“Did you or did you not see a cave full of bodies back there?”
“Okay. Okay.” I raise my hands in surrender. “Keep your fingers crossed this is a way out.”
“It’s probably a closet,” says Ben.
Cody shakes his head. “No way. Door’s too fancy.”
I grab the knob. Admittedly, I haven’t had good luck with closets. “Hopefully, I don’t wind up in Kansas as a five-year-old again.”
“Huh?” asks both boys simultaneously.
“Forget it. Long story.” I pull the door open… and my jaw drops at the sight of a vast forest. It’s as if I’d opened the front door of a cabin deep in the woods. Only, this forest is way more lush than what we hiked in around here.
“Dude. We found frickin’ Narnia,” says Cody.
“That’s a big closet,” whispers Ben.
I close the door. “Okay. That’s too weird. Guess you guys get to see my boobs tonight.”
They gawk at me.
Ben’s the first to recover enough composure to ask, “What?”
“Only way out of here is to fight through the Scraps. Every time I get into a fight with other vampires, my clothes end up in shreds.”
“Scraps?” asks Cody.
“Those other vampires? They’re not full vamps. Closer to mindless creatures driven by pure animal instincts.”
“Oh… Cowboys fans,” mutters Cody.
“Huh?” I glance at him.
“Not into football?”
“No. Not really.”
A low, rumbling growl comes from the outer chamber. Heavy, stomping footsteps approach.
“Uh oh. Dad’s home,” whispers Ben.
“Screw it. Run!” I rip the door open and jump in, taking a few quick steps before turning to look back.
A swirling… portal hangs in midair, a thousand varying shades of blue forming an oval ring around a hole in reality that looks in at the cave behind it.
The boys rush in not a second before the shadow of a huge man appears at the top of the hill, running toward us. Orange glowing eyes stare straight into my soul. In that brief glimmer of mental contact, it occurs to me why the dude is so huge. He’s a Beast.
Ben snags the knob and pulls the door with him as he runs in, slamming it. The boys scramble over to stand on either side of me again and spin back to gawk at the portal.
“Should we keep running?” asks Cody. “He might come after us.”
Light glimmers across the portal—and it disappears, leaving us staring at thick, verdant forest.
“Or not,” says Ben.
“Shit.” Cody stares at the sky. “Did we really think going through a door to the woods at the bottom of a cave would be a good idea?”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Maybe go
ing through the door wasn’t such an awesome idea. Kinda panicked.”
16
Next Moves
Forest surrounds us in every direction.
The trees appear more or less like normal oaks, but they’re enormous, two or three times the size of trees I’m used to seeing. Dense carpets of green moss cover most of the trunks, along with long runners of draping ivy hanging between branches. Unseen birds whistle somewhere overhead, along with a constant undertone of insects clicking and chirping.
“Damn, that guy was huge,” says Cody.
“He’s a Beast.” I bite my lip while looking around for any sign of a landmark.
“No kidding.” Ben shakes his head. “Dude seriously needs to lay off the ’roids.”
I laugh. “No. I mean a literal Beast. It’s a bloodline.”
“Is that good or bad?” asks Cody.
“Bad,” says Ben. “He’s a vampire.”
“So’s she.” Cody pats me on the shoulder. “And she’s kinda cool.”
Ben gives me this heartbroken stare. “You’re not really eighteen, are you? You died when you were like fourteen and you’ve been a vampire for four years.”
“Do I really need to go through this again?” I ask, still kinda giggling. “I’ve been a vamp for like not even two months. I turned eighteen a couple weeks before.”
“Oh, that sucks,” says Cody. “How’d it happen?”
I give them a brief explanation of my ex-boyfriend Scott stabbing me to death when I dumped him for cheating, and Dalton saving my ass. “And I look younger than I am because of my bloodline. That’s also why I can kinda go outside during the day if it’s gloomy. Bright sunlight will still cook me. But, as vampires go, I’m kinda weak.”
“Whoa. Sorry you got killed. What an asshole,” says Cody.
“Thanks.”
“And Beasts aren’t?” asks Ben. “Weak I mean?”
“I’ve never seen one up close before that I’ve realized. No one’s really explained too much about them other than that they’re the closest to surrendering their minds to becoming monsters.”
The Last Family Road Trip Page 12