Bored To Death_A Vampire Thriller

by Amanda Linehan

  “How did you do that?” Lola said. “I could barely follow you.”

  Matt looked exceptionally pleased with himself.

  “The wall isn’t perfectly flat,” he said, putting his hand on the stone wall from the other side. “The surface is concave so I had a...ledge, I guess you could say. With all the speed I get, it’s enough to keep me moving.”

  I was impressed. Having a psychological gift, I never thought much about physical ones and what you could do with them.

  “So what about us?” I asked.

  Matt scrunched up his forehead and rubbed his chin.

  “Well, I think I can carry you. One at a time.”

  “You think?” I said, wishing he had more conviction.

  “I think. I’m pretty sure it won’t slow me down, but I’m not exactly sure what it will do to my balance.”

  Great, I thought. And if we don’t make it, we just fall forever into the chasm.

  I looked at the other side and realized that there was no other way to get across. Not that I could see or sense anyway. And Clopse said I was supposed to go on. This must be the way. He wouldn’t have left us here if we couldn’t get across.

  “Alright, take me first,” I said, as I was a little heavier than Lola. If he could get me across, he could get Lola across.

  I felt a hand on my arm.

  “It’ll be okay. We’re supposed to keep moving. I’m getting it very strongly. If this is the only way, this is the way we’re supposed to go,” Lola said, and in that moment I felt all the gratitude for her friendship that I had had over the years, but had never truly felt before.

  “Ready?” Matt asked and smiled despite what I knew was fear behind his eyes. If this didn’t work, God knows what would happen to us.

  I made eye contact and silently I communicated yes.

  In one smooth movement, Matt picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, where I felt completely undignified. He jostled me around a bit, trying to settle on a position.

  “I think I need you over both shoulders,” he said, as he tried to swing my body over to his other shoulder.

  One of his arms secured my legs, and his other arm grasped my arms as I tried my best to mold myself around the back of his neck. His shoulders dug into my body in uncomfortable ways.

  “I think I got you,” he said, and there was nothing left to do but give this a shot.

  “Go for it,” I said. Just before he took off I thought of what it would feel like to fall forever.

  The movement jolted me out of my thoughts and the environment around me became a blur. Just as I thought that maybe we hadn’t made it, that we were now falling deep into the cavern, the world stopped moving and Matt was putting me on the ground.

  My feet hit the earth. I immediately felt light headed, so I sat down and thanked my lucky stars to be on the ground.

  “Made it,” Matt said and laughed a little at me while giving my shoulders a quick squeeze before he went back across for Lola.

  Before I knew it, Lola and Matt were back beside me.

  “Vic? You okay,” Lola asked, and I couldn’t figure out why the two of them were totally okay with having just run sideways across a wall that was adjacent to a deep dark hole. Apparently, I was the wuss here.

  “I’m good,” I said, standing up. “I’m just glad my feet are on the ground.”

  We were all across and ready to move forward.

  As I looked into the dark expanse in front of me, I was gripped by a fear that I hadn’t felt since I was human. Not since the night I had been turned.

  I didn’t want to walk forward. I wanted to turn back around, leave this house and go back home. Go hunting again, hang out with Lola, have sex with Matt. Eat at the best restaurants and drink everything I wanted without getting drunk. Read my books and live in the shadows.

  But there was a chasm behind me and it was a long way home after that. I had brought Lola and Matt with me, and I had already risked their lives. We had come too far, and it was too late to turn back.

  Dread filled every inch of my body as I looked in the direction we had to continue. The Three were waiting for me. For some reason. I didn’t want to know what it was.

  5

  The cavern closed in around us and became a tunnel as we pushed forward. It was pitch black, but our night vision guided us. In fact, mine was more brilliant than I had remembered it in some time.

  The nooks and crannies of the tunnel walls absorbed my vision, and they stood out brilliantly. What in the light would look like plain stone became magnificent in the darkness, and I was reminded of something I thought all those years ago when I was transformed.

  In some ways, you could see more in the darkness than in the light. Things that disappeared when the light shone directly on them became visible when it receded. It was the depth I could see.

  I could see the way the stone was not completely flat. I could see the imperfections in it. The cracks, the fissures, small jagged points, little shimmery pieces of gemstone here and there. Things that if we had a light with us would have been invisible.

  What would have ordinarily been completely boring was now stunning.

  I wondered where the next test would be. And I knew there would be one. That’s what happened in places like this.

  The tunnel was wide enough that the three of us could walk almost one next to the other, so Lola walked directly beside me to the right and Matt walked in the middle of us, behind us a couple of feet. None of us spoke.

  Up ahead, I could see what looked like a fork in the tunnel, but it was a five-pronged fork.

  The pathway split into five, and it was time for us to make a choice. I would have been nervous, but with Lola with us, I knew we’d get where we were going. And anyway, I was getting the strong feeling that I knew which way she’d say to go. The branch second to the left was calling for me. I waited for Lola to confirm.

  “Right-most tunnel,” she called out and Matt immediately went to follow her, but I stopped.

  “Are you sure” I said, shocked she hadn’t led us to the tunnel I thought it would be.

  “Yeah, positive,” she said and seemed a little annoyed that I was questioning her.

  I peered down the tunnel I wanted and felt pulled, as if giant hands were reaching out of it and grabbing onto my shoulders. But Lola was saying to go right.

  Matt had stopped at the entrance to the right-most tunnel, and was looking between both of us with his brow knitted.

  “What’s wrong, Vic?” he asked.

  “I...”

  I felt ashamed to say what I wanted to say. And out of line. This was Lola’s gift and I didn’t want to argue with her, but I felt so strongly I couldn’t back down.

  “I don’t know why...but I think we should go through this one instead,” I said as I pointed.

  Lola looked at me for a moment, like she wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Vic, it’s this way. This is the way I’m getting,” Lola said, pointing down her choice.

  “Yeah, I know...I can’t explain it...but I just really think we should go this way.”

  Matt moved his eyes between us like it was a tennis match.

  “I don’t get it. I’ve got the location, Vic.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to step on your toes...”

  “But you will anyway?” Lola said, exasperated. “Look, I know you’re good with your intuition, but I’m the locater. I’m getting nothing that way.”

  Matt cleared his throat and turned his body so he was more in the middle of us.

  “Well...maybe we should listen to Vic,” Matt said. “Clopse did say The Three are waiting for her.”

  Lola turned around to face Matt, and I didn’t need my night vision to know what look she was giving him.

  “Listen, I got us here,” she said. “I’m feeling this direction, so are we going this way or not?”

  Lola was right. Who was I to think that I should pick the direction? She had the gift. I tried as best I could to pry t
hose imaginary hands off my shoulders and turn toward the right.

  “Alright, let’s go your way,” I said and filed in behind Matt, who was behind Lola.

  This tunnel was narrower, and for whatever reason, my night vision was not so brilliant inside of it.

  We walked about twenty-five feet down it when the feeling to turn back around became overwhelming.

  If there were hands pulling me from the other tunnel, now there were hands pushing me back out of this one. Thirty-five feet.

  The force was strong. I knew I should turn us back around. But I didn’t want to offend Lola. Forty-five feet.

  I forced my feet forward, to shut up and follow Lola, but I couldn’t do it. Fifty-five feet.

  “We’ve got to turn back around,” I called up front to Lola.

  I heard her sigh with exasperation, and I knew she was rolling her eyes and thought I was being a huge bitch. But at this point I didn’t care. We were turning around and going the way I felt pulled in.

  “Sorry,” I said, a little pathetically and I knew that if we were going to reach The Three I was going to need to lead us. Even if Matt and Lola were to use their gifts, I needed to be the one in charge.

  There wasn’t a whole lot of room to turn around in the tunnel, but I managed to get my body going in the right direction and get us back to the main tunnel. It was weird, but my night vision seemed to get more brilliant again.

  I stopped at the entrance to the fourth tunnel, which, thankfully, was a little wider and peered into its depth. This was the one. I was sure of it.

  Lola was angry at me. I knew that. I could feel it, but I had to push forward in this direction.

  She’d get over it. She always did.

  This direction felt a lot better.

  I started down it and felt Matt right behind me and Lola behind him. There was no need to make any conversation, so we didn’t.

  It felt like we had been walking forever at this point and I was getting bored. I wanted something to happen. To reach The Three, or at least to leave these tunnels. Maybe most of all, I wanted to do what we needed to do and get back home.

  The rumbling started as a quiet hum. A small vibration. Then it got louder.

  The earth beneath my feet started to shake, and I had the sudden desperate fear that we had gone the wrong way. I could almost hear Lola’s thoughts going, “I told you so.”

  I ran out of instinct.

  I heard Matt and Lola behind me as the earth and rock shook all around us. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but in my imagination I saw tumbling rocks and the floor giving way.

  Maybe I had chosen the wrong direction.

  Little pebble-sized pieces of stone fell from the walls and hit my body, stinging my skin. My heart pounded in my chest as my feet pounded the earth, and suddenly I felt as if I might have to run forever.

  I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than being trapped under piles of rock forever.

  Up ahead, a hundred feet, maybe more, the tunnel opened up again and I prayed to God, or whatever deity governed this place, that we would make it before we were all crushed.

  We would survive the falling rocks, of course, but be buried alive.

  Fifty feet. The noise was deafening, and I was being assaulted on all sides by falling rock.

  Thirty-five feet. I could no longer hear Matt and Lola behind me.

  Twenty feet. We were almost there, but I wasn’t sure we would all make it.

  Ten feet. I heard the loudest noise of all. Like the world around us was opening up and swallowing itself.

  Maybe this is what Raven was talking about.

  The order is ruined.

  The world was ending. We hadn’t made it to The Three in time.

  And then I stepped out of the tunnel and into another monstrous cavern.

  I felt arms go around me as Matt grabbed me when he cleared the tunnel. Lola came into my vision, leaning over her knees and breathing hard.

  We had made it. The world had not ended.

  I turned around.

  In front of me was what reminded me of a giant hand with only one of its four fingers. The ring finger on a left hand. The one we had come through.

  It was the only one remaining.

  The other four tunnels had collapsed, so that the entrances were just piles of rocks. The ceilings and walls had completely folded in on one another.

  I had picked the right one.

  6

  “But I’m never wrong,” Lola said, hands on hips, still catching her breath as she surveyed the scene in front of us. “How did that happen?”

  She looked distressed and I knew how she felt to have a gift fail her.

  “God, I would have buried us all alive.” She crouched down and hung her head, hands resting on top of it.

  “No, that was a test for me,” I said. “They wanted me to make a choice.”

  “Who? The Three?” Matt said.

  “Yeah. I think they gave Lola a false signal. They wanted me to follow my intuition.”

  Seducers were already naturally gifted at making decisions intuitively. Seduction relied upon it. But to trust my intuition against something my brain told me was correct was an entirely different experience.

  They knew I would trust Lola. That I would just assume she was right. That’s why they made the pull so strong, so I couldn’t ignore it. And if I had, I would have perished.

  “But how do you know that? Maybe my gift just failed,” Lola said, now sitting on the ground with her arms wrapped around her knees. “Maybe I just got it wrong.”

  “No,” I said and bent down in front of her. “How many times have you been wrong before?”

  “Never,” she said, almost whispering the word. “Never.”

  “Exactly. They transmitted you a false signal. That was exactly what was supposed to happen.”

  I stood up and held a hand out to Lola to help her up as well. Her hand shook a little when she took mine, but a second later she was righted.

  “Jesus,” she said, looking at the crushed tunnels again.

  I couldn’t blame her. She was imagining what it would be like to be trapped in stone for eternity.

  “So where are they? The Three. Where are they?” Matt said, and I heard both anger and impatience in his voice.

  Only a novice vampire would talk that way.

  “Ahead,” I said, and I wasn’t entirely sure where that answer was coming from. “Look,” I continued and beckoned Matt and Lola closer, “that may not be the last time we’re tricked. The tests are getting more difficult. More complex. We’ve got to stay calm so we can figure out what to do. If one of us loses it, we’ll be in trouble.”

  I was actually more worried about Matt. Despite the fact that Lola was shaken up, she had much more experience as a vampire than Matt did and wouldn’t lose her cool as easily.

  Matt was much more susceptible to anything The Three might throw at us. This was not a world he was completely used to yet. Not to mention that the physical world was where he was the most comfortable—that showed in his gift. The Three did not operate on the physical plane. They were much more mercurial in their ways.

  I turned around and walked in front this time, with both Matt and Lola behind me. I was worried how this would affect Lola’s locating. She wouldn’t have quite the confidence anymore, so I had to be prepared to use my own intuition.

  The cavern had no back wall. It simply opened up and continued on. I had the sudden feeling that we were here. Though what here was I didn’t know.

  We walked.

  And we walked.

  And we walked.

  Nothing changed. It was like being on a treadmill.

  “I want to say we’re walking in circles, but we’re still going in a straight line,” Matt said, stopping.

  He was right. We weren’t actually moving.

  The two of them looked at me as if to say “figure it out,” and backed away from me a bit.

  They were right. This was my ta
sk alone.

  I stood back and took a deep breath, clearing my mind of all thoughts, and waited.

  What popped into my mind was an image of myself at a bar, locking onto a target. Knowing he was the one before he had even spotted me. Knowing it deep in my bones.

  And now I was staring at an image of myself.

  I thought I knew which one was really me, but I began to doubt myself and my consciousness seemed to move, from one me to the other, until I swam somewhere between the two of them, formless.

  I watched myself and I was myself.

  I was still at the bar (although what “I” I was, was becoming unclear), and there was my mark.

  It was a scene that had unfolded many times in my three centuries. Hundreds of times.

  I sat at a table and sipped a drink, like a big cat lying in the tall grass, watching but unseen. The man I wanted sat at his own table across the bar, talking to two women.

  I always loved it when my mark began interacting with other women, instead of his own male friends. It made them more susceptible to me, and it was invigorating. Whether it was the competition—that I knew I would own—or the fact that it put him in the right mindset, I wasn’t sure, but either way I felt alive.

  Then the scene changed, and I was wiping blood off my mouth and discarding a dead body, feeling something like remorse, but not quite. Maybe nostalgia was what it was, in some weird way. Maybe envy. I wasn’t sure.

  But as I watched myself, something became clear about my hunting. About what drove me forward, what I loved about it. It was the knowing.

  Knowing I could get away with it. Knowing exactly which target to pick, and how to seduce him. Knowing he would die and I would walk away, more alive than ever. Knowing that I would always win.

  And that’s when it struck me.

  I wasn’t a seducer. I was a knower.

  The scene before me disappeared, and I felt myself pulled from it and back into the cavern in which I had started.

  It was too dark, almost like my night vision wasn’t working correctly, and then suddenly, it was very, very bright.

  I saw Matt and Lola, but couldn’t speak. They were both looking behind me, up at the ceiling it seemed like, so I turned around.