by Maria Amor
She would have bet good money that it was the feeling of an ice pick being driven through a temple. So not good. To make matters a hell of a lot worse, she was also entirely disoriented. She hadn’t even opened her eyes yet, which meant she had no idea where she was. Where or why. All she knew was the even the idea of getting up from the fetal position she was curled into made her want to throw up.
“Wakey, wakey, darling. Can’t sleep all day, can we? That’s certainly not what I’ve brought you here for.”
Her mind felt bruised and battered, but this was a voice she recognized. She couldn’t quite tell from where, not yet, but it was something she recognized. She knew without knowing why that she was in danger. Despite not knowing who the owner of the voice was, she recognized its malice.
“Come on! Chop chop, on the double. It’s time to get up! So, sit up!”
She did her best to do as she was told, her body racked with waves of nausea. She fought to control it, knowing that getting sick would do nothing to please this man who was so intent on yelling at her, but it was a battle she lost. She only managed to get up on her knees before she doubled over, one hand pressed against her stomach and one pressed firmly against the side of her head.
There was very little in her stomach, but everything that was in there came up and out of her, splattering on the floor with a foul smell. Even while she was being sick, she could hear the man who was egging her on to get up in the first place cussing up a storm. She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t been ready to sit up in the first place, but she couldn’t. She was still too busy dry heaving.
“You’re fine,” the man spat, “just being melodramatic. Same as you were in The Blood. Flinching the way you did when all I did was try and touch your pretty blonde hair. So stupid, to act that way. Stupid girls who play with fire get themselves burned. I bet that’s a lesson you won’t ever forget again, not after this. Not that you’ll have the opportunity to. I don’t let my prizes go, I can assure you of that.”
Still bent over and on her knees, Delaney’s eyes flew open. The first thing she saw was that the hand she’d held on the back of her head was slick with blood. She put her hand to the same spot again and winced with pain. So there was the source of the headache. She’d either fallen or been hit in the back of the head.
Judging by the way the guy talking to her was speaking, she was willing to bet she t was hit in the head. She didn’t know what she’d been hit with, but whatever it was had done its job and done it well. She just couldn’t understand why. Why on earth would somebody just up and decide to bash her head in?
“Up here, darling, look alive. It’s no fun for you to just sit there dazed and confused. And with all that precious blood leaking out of your poor torn scalp. Seems like such a waste, it does. I should take care of it for you, and I just might, but not until we have a little fun. That’s the way it should have been, you see? That’s the way it would have been if it hadn’t been for that meddlesome bastard.”
All at once, she remembered everything. It all came flooding back to her in a rush so great it almost knocked her flat on her back again. That was all she wanted, just to curl up in her fetal position again and go to sleep and wait for this nightmare to be over. Which she couldn’t do, of course. Pretending she wasn’t in a dangerous situation wasn’t going to get her out of it.
The only thing that might do that was her being very smart and very lucky, and even then, there was no guarantee. She looked up and saw Lucas peering down at her from his perch on what looked to be a rickety old railing of a set of stairs that hadn’t been used in a long, long time.
All it took was his eyes on her for everything to come flooding back to her all at once. Her strange meeting with Augusten Grady, her hesitance outside of The Blood. She could still remember the way her skin had crawled when Lucas had attempted to touch her and the sense of awe she’d felt when she’d first seen who it was who had come to her rescue.
Her body still tingled with the muscle memory of their two bodies intertwined, her thoughts still clouded with the confusion of why he had made the decision to leave her to wake up in his bed alone. She didn’t want to think about what came next, didn’t want to remember the terror or the pain, but she forced herself to do it, anyway. Not knowing was no help at all.
She had taken Jack’s offered money and called a cab, just the way he’d instructed. She’d felt cloudy and unsure for the whole ride, her mind a million miles away. She’d felt the way teenage girls felt when they were still in high school and had a crush on an older boy.
She felt that same kind of wanting that was so close to desperation, that need to know where she stood without the promise of ever being given that coveted knowledge. She’d gone to the club for an adventure, and that was all.
She’d found said adventure in the form of the most handsome man in the world (as far as she was concerned, anyway) who also happened to be a vampire. She’d gone with him for an adventure but come away with a want that ran so deep inside of her it felt like it was in her bones.
She liked him. That was something she hadn’t planned on at all. She had only wanted to be wild, to have a crazy one-night stand and the best sex of her life. What she hadn’t banked on was the idea of developing actual feelings for him in so little time.
She wasn’t an idiot, nor was she a hopeless romantic that believed in the happily ever after endings from the movies. She wasn’t flighty and she wasn’t shallow, but none of that mattered when it came to Jack Swells. Whether it made sense or not, whether practical minded people thought there had been enough time for it, it didn’t matter. She genuinely liked him and it was a like she could see turning into love with alarming speed.
Those were the things that had been on her mind during the long cab ride to her car and she’d been so consumed with the thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed when the cab stopped. The guy had needed to clear his throat loudly and finally to just tell her the ride was at an end. After getting into her car, she’d sat for a long time, just staring straight ahead of her and seeing nothing.
Had she been paying attention, she might have noticed the solitary car parked right near the entrance of the club. She would have seen that it was Jack’s car, that he’d left her and come here. Maybe she would have done things in exactly the same way after seeing it, that was always a possibility, but maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would have knocked on the door and he would have let her in and none of what took place afterwards would have happened at all.
But she hadn’t noticed. Her eyes, although wide open, had seen nothing and after a time, she’d turned the ignition of her car and driven herself home. She spent the whole ride home sifting through thoughts of Jack, as well as ideas of what kind of information she would provide Augusten with on her next visit.
She knew she’d have to give him something eventually. Not only that, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if the reclusive man came to a point where anecdotal evidence ceased to be sufficient. What would she do then? Would she take pictures, something she knew in her gut neither Jack nor any of his kind would take kindly to? Or would she make the decision to walk away?
She didn’t know whether her dream of becoming the world’s first genuine paranormal reporter was worth what it might cost her. In fact, now that she’d seen what she’d seen, she wasn’t sure that had ever been her dream to begin with. Maybe what she’d really wanted was to find a way to live a life that felt real, a life that was authentically different than all the options she’d already offered.
If that was the case, she’d definitely found it. Now she would have to find a way to reconcile it with the manner in which her trip into the underworld had begun. It wasn’t only the money thing, either, although that was a definite consideration. It was also the fact that Augusten had been the one to shine the light for her, so that she could see the world for what it really was. The idea of abandoning him to that empty house with nobody to keep him company but Brady felt too cruel to be born.
She’d still been mulling the problem over when she’d crawled into bed. She was exhausted, so much more than she had realized, and she didn’t bother undressing before getting under the covers. The last thing she thought to herself was to kick off her shoes before falling into a deep sleep. Her waking was only by chance.
Her guess was that it was because she could feel someone watching her because when she came back to consciousness, Lucas had been sitting cross legged on the foot of her bed. He’d been clad in long sleeves and pants with a pair of massive sunglasses on top of his head. His face had looked like death, like skin stretched over a skull with no real life to animate it.
It was only when he saw that she was looking at him that he’d broken into a grin, which managed to be even more horrible that what it had been before. She’d tried to speak to him, to ask him what he was doing in her home and how he even knew where she lived, but she never got the chance.
Before she could so much as flinch, he had her around the ankle. With a brutal, superhuman strength, he pulled her towards him, then stood and launched her across the room. She hit the pole designating her kitchen hard, cracking her skull before she slid down to the floor. The last thing she remembered was the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth and the smell of rotting earth as Lucas bent down to retrieve her. After that, everything went black.
“There you are, there’s those pretty eyes of yours. See, not so hard, is it? Not so hard to pay attention.”
“What-” her voice dissolved into a fit of coughs, which only made the taste of pennies worse and drew a horrendous smile from Lucas. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? Why, this! This is exactly what I want, the thing I’ve been looking so forward to ever since that lovely woman came to comfort me.”
“Lovely woman? What woman? What are you talking about?”
“A wonderful woman, although not my type. She’s a vampire, you see. I don’t enjoy vampires.”
“But that’s what you are.”
“Exactly!”
Lucas gave a crow of delight, as if this was the most intelligent thing he’d ever heard come out of anybody’s mouth and leaped to his feet, walking the railing he used as a seat like he was a tightrope walker in the circus. With the sudden movement, the hood of the sweater he wore fell back off his head and revealed skin that was very badly burned.
She let out an involuntary little gasp, then clapped her hands over her mouth to silence any sounds that might follow. Lucas was clearly crazy and offending him was the last thing she should be doing, but the sight of his pulverized flesh was appalling. He looked very much like someone had doused him in gasoline and then thrown a match.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” he said with a laugh that made it sound like he didn’t think it was terrible in any way, “Truly dreadful, I know. I blame you for it, without a doubt, but not to worry. We’ll even the score. Just you wait and see if we don’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Is that so? Which part?”
“Any of it. Why it’s my fault, why you don’t like vampires. Really, I don’t understand what’s going on here.”
In one terrifying leap, Lucas moved off his rail and landed crouched directly in front of her. She had only a moment to look around and try to see where exactly she was, but unfortunately there was very little to go on. It looked like a large warehouse, and it looked abandoned. It struck her that it looked like it had been abandoned for a long time, and she felt her heart sinking in her chest.
Nobody knew where she was. She wouldn’t even have a job looking for her when she came in late because she didn’t have a job anymore. The only thing that could constitute as a job was her adventuring for Augusten Grady, and there was no set time limit between her visits to his home. It could be weeks before anyone noticed that she’d gone missing, and she feared that by that time it would be far too late.
This vampire, this thing that had once been a man named Lucas, didn’t look like he had one sane thought in his whole body. It was even worse than it had been in the club, when she had only thought that he was overly pushy and unkempt. Now that she saw him up close, she saw that he had the look of a lunatic about him. His almost white blonde hair was sticking straight on end and in every possible direction.
His eyes were bloodshot and the pupils rimmed with yellow, his lips dry and cracked to the point of bleeding. Or else they would have been bleeding, had there been blood in his body to come out of the open wounds. His clothes didn’t just look old fashioned, they were old fashioned. They looked like he’d woken up in a grave, pulled himself out, and then never bothered to find himself a change of clothes.
She searched her mind for something, anything she might be able to use as leverage with this strange and broken being. She needed something she could use to distract him from whatever nefarious intentions he had for her, but there was nothing. She was grasping at straws and coming up with nothing. All she knew was that his breath smelled a lot like death and she was so afraid she felt like she might lose her mind and never retrieve it.
“Well, seeing as we’ve got nothing but time on our hands now, I’d be more than happy to address your questions. We’ll do that and then we’ll play. What was the first again? You’ll have to forgive me, my thoughts just fly away, whether I like it or not.”
Delaney nodded, as if she understood what this monster was talking about, and choked back a sob. In her head she saw the word “play” flashing over and over and over again. What did he mean by that? What did he mean by play? Whatever it was, she was certain it wouldn’t fall into line with her idea of a good time. Still, talking to him, or rather keeping him talking, was the only hope she had of delaying the inevitable and unknown horrors that were surely coming.
“It was about vampires. About why you don’t want them.”
“Ha! Yes, that’s it! What a good listener you are, Delaney. I like that in a girl. I have no interest in the female vampire because they’re simply too strong. They feel the need to thwart me, to overpower me at every turn. They think they’re better than me. Humans, though, human women are so deliciously weak compared to our kind, so soft and pliable.
That’s why you shouldn’t have discarded me. You think you’re so strong, don’t you? But you aren’t. Not nearly so strong as you think you are. I’ll show you. You’ll learn, the hard way. It’s the only way girls like you can learn. It’s the only way you listen. You’ll see how weak you are and once I make you see it, you’ll never forget it. How’s that for an answer?”
Delaney could only manage to nod her head. Her powers of speech, at least for the moment, had entirely left her. His words washed over her likes waves, making her terror so complete that it hardly felt like anything at all anymore. That was an interesting lesson to learn, although she sorely wished she’d never had to learn it.
Apparently, at least for her, once a certain level of fear was reached, her body and mind both just felt numb. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism and perhaps it was something more sinister; she had no way of knowing. She only felt a vague sense of gratitude for having been partially relieved of her mental state.
“I think that just about covers it,” she croaked, hoping she sounded at least a little bit stronger than she felt.
“Good. That’s good; I’m glad. I have a feeling we’re going to reach a wonderful understanding by the end of all of this, you and me. Now, what was the second question?”
She remained silent. She didn’t want to tell him, not at all. The way this conversation was going, it felt like Lucas was only building up a case, collecting evidence of what a terrible girl she was to justify his future treatment of her.
But remaining silent didn’t seem like a good idea, either. What it seemed like was a really good way to piss him off. If ever there was a girl stuck between a roc
k and a hard place, it was Delaney. Lucas, who appeared to have grown tired of waiting for a response, seemed to agree whole heartedly.
“There was a second!” he shouted as he jumped up and down, stamping his feet like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum, “There was a second and I want to know what it was! I may not have a memory, but I remember that much. Tell me what it was!”
“Okay!” Her body was shaking so badly she thought she might break into a million pieces, but the way he was shouting at her also had another, unexpected positive effect; it made her angry. It made her angry enough to feel just a little bit calmer, which was good. Any advantage she could get at this point was good. No doubt about it.
“Okay, okay nothing. I don’t want your platitudes. I want you to tell me what the question was.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. The second question was why.”
“Why what?”
“Why what’s happened to your face is my fault.”
“Ah. Ahhh yes, that was it. Perfect. That takes us back around to the exact place where I want us to be. You’ve been a naughty, rude girl. I had to get you and take you to make you see that, but I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait until it was dark out, now could I? You might have run.
You might have vanished, never to be found again. I had to come here with the nasty sun beating down upon me and, well, you see how that went. It’s not good for my kind, not at all. So yes, it’s because of you. Not to worry, though, not at all. It will heal. It will heal long before your lessons are complete.”
He was a mad man. She’d had no idea in The Blood that she was talking to a genuine psychopath, but now she saw clearly that it was so. Her entire life had just been reduced to one thing: it was a clock, or better yet, an hourglass. The sand representing her life was quickly spilling down. It was her job to find a way out of this mess before the transfer was complete. If she couldn’t? God forbid she had to find out.