I recounted everything that I had seen in as much detail as I could recall. The more I talked the more she calmed down though she still wore a path into the rug. What had felt like an hour of recap had been a few moments at best. It felt like an eternity as I went over every detail, every mistake, and every hiccup.
"To summarize then," said the Queen, her finger pointed in the air to make sure I paid attention, "You were late getting back to Prussia, you don't know where her guards were, she was in the process of being swept off her feet by Robert which would jeopardize my interests, your ex-girlfriend and another woman attacked them in the park and you let them both go? And not only did you not go after this other woman but you left Lydia to some light clean up and then went on your merry way?"
"I was concerned about Prussia," I said, not knowing what else to offer up but the truth, "I couldn't leave Prussia with Lydia and pursue the other woman,"
"You should have KILLED Lydia! You were well within your right in following my orders!" she screamed at me.
I let my eyes fall to the floor, having never angered the Queen to the extent that she had raised her voice, let alone yelled at me. I had never seen her so angry before in my life.
"My priority was Prussia," I repeated in a quiet voice.
The Queen stood within inches of my face and when I looked into her eyes I saw what I hadn't expected to see. I saw frustration and understanding.
"If Prussia had died I would have had to stake you," she said, voice shaking with her frustration and anger, "I wouldn't have wanted to. I would have had to," she emphasized the last part.
"I will keep her safe," I said, "I won't let her out of my sight,"
I tilted my chin up, trying to steel myself so that she could see that I meant what I said. But her face had already fallen. Victoria’s disappointment seemed to be unwavering.
"We will keep her here, under constant guard," said Victoria, "This is the safest place she could be,"
The door opened and a bloody Tommy stumbled in. His night clothes were covered in droplets that had run down his face and chin to splash everywhere. He could barely stand.
"Prussia," he managed to stammer out, "She's been taken,"
I looked at the Queen in complete shock and she returned the same look to me. We both sunk down into a crouch and waited for an attacker to burst through the door that Tommy had come through. After a second, we both moved. The Queen moved to her side table and removed a stake from a display. I rushed to Tommy, yanking him in to the room and away from the opening of the door.
"What happened? How many are there?" I asked, wishing he wasn't such a frail creature for once.
The blood that sputtered from his lips smelled delicious but all I could think about was Prussia.
"One," he said, his hands grasping onto my arms as they held him up from the ground where he had fallen, "She just walked in and took her. There...there wasn't a guard. It was just me,"
I dashed out of the room and into the next one, scanning the disarray of the room and failing to find a single trace of Prussia or of a ransom note. Whoever had done this hadn't wasted any time. I bolted back into the Queen's office and sat Tommy up.
"Tell me what happened," I said, "Start from the beginning. Anything you can remember,"
Tommy dabbed at his head and the Queen grabbed a blanket to stop the bleeding, stake still in hand.
"She looked like a human but I knew she wasn't. Vampires have this look in their eyes, like, they've seen death," said Tommy, his voice shaking, "I had just finished drawing the last sample and was getting ready to check her for any bite marks and the door opened. I thought it had been the doctor. She walked right in and she hit me. She hit me so hard I flew across the room. I thought she was going to kill me but she didn't. She just picked up Prussia right off the sofa and walked out,"
"What did she look like?" I asked, listening intently.
"She...had short hair," said Tommy, "But it wasn't your normal short hair. It was so short it was like pressed to her head but it wasn't shaved,"
Tommy shook his head, as though frustrated at not being able to express himself clearly. And then I understood what he wanted to describe. Short hair from the 20s.
"Flappers," I said, looking at Tommy and hopeful that the woman had been the same one from before.
"Yes," he said, "Exactly like one of those flapper girls from the old movies,"
His face lit up and he smiled for a moment. He had told me what I needed to know. I knew who took her.
"Do you know who it is?" asked the Queen, a hand on my shoulder.
"No," I said, realization and anger welling up in me, "But I have an idea who might. Tommy, let's get you cleaned up. Prussia is in danger. We don't have much time,"
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE - Prussia
I bolted from a dead sleep to find someone biting my neck. Not a love nibble or a creepy nuzzle but a deep sinking bite that pierced flesh and sent a streak of blood racing down the front of my blouse.
I tried to strike my attacker but found my wrists bound over my head. I tried to kick but I only swung, my feet barely able to touch the floor. I tried as hard as I could to stand but the tips of my toes grazed the floor in a way that mocked my attempts. I had been suspended over the ground somehow. I couldn’t reach the floor save for a toe or two. Looking above at my hands, I could immediately see why.
I had been hung from a meat hook by my wrists, bound together. I tried to hit my attacker with my face and it only resulted in a fiercer bite into my neck. The shooting pain was so intense that I saw nothing but blinding light for a moment. When I could see again, I also realized I had been screaming. My eyes were wide with terror as I watched a woman walk in. We seemed to be inside a walk-in freezer.
“Help me,” I screamed in terror.
I tried kicking as much as I could but the man chewing on my neck had a firm bite and now had a big ball of my hair in his hand. Every time I kicked he yanked my hair.
“Please!” I screamed as the woman stood there, taking in the scene. Maybe she was in shock.
“Get off of her!” the woman finally yelled at the man.
He didn’t budge. I kicked out as hard as I could and he yanked my hair which sent my head reeling back, causing even more agony not only for my neck but the curve of my neck where he had latched on to me.
I whimpered at the pain and gave the woman in the doorway my most pleading look. Had she frozen in fear? Would she go to get help? I gave another kick, not nearly as strong as the last one had been and it must not have bothered him as much. He gave a deep, guttural growl and sank his bite in with new determination. I screamed from the pain and kept looking to the woman in the doorway.
“I said get off of her,” the woman said, this time quiet but threatening.
He didn’t pay her any attention. I felt the tension in the room rise. I had hope as she took fast and angry steps toward the man that dug his face around in my neck. She reached him and I was mortified as she grabbed my attacker by the arm and ripped him away from me and into the wall of the freezer in one seamless motion.
She looked deceptively weak for how much strength she really had. But then he turned his face to both of us. First he looked at me, ready for another bite and then hesitated, looking at the woman who had come to my aid. I lost my breath for a moment. Because looking into his face, blood smeared from cheek to cheek, I could see that he had bared his teeth and they were long. They were much longer than a normal person.
“I don’t believe it,” said the woman.
I looked at her then, sure that she had been just as shocked as I had been. But she had been looking at me.
“She’s never seen fangs,” said the man with my blood soaking his face.
They both smiled at each other and in that moment I saw hers too. She had teeth just like the man. And they laughed.
“This can’t be happening,” I said, my mind trying to catch up with what my eyes saw.
“Yes, well, it is,” said the w
oman, smiling at me, “Brad, get her down and sit her in the chair. I want to find out what she knows,”
I felt weak. I didn’t know how long I had been hanging in the freezer on a meat hook. I didn’t feel cold at all. My attacker, Brad, pulled me off of the meat hook and threw me over his shoulder like a low quality cut of meat. Then I saw what had been hanging behind me.
Row after row, there were others hanging just like me – unconscious. Gaping wounds in the sides of their necks, in their wrists, anywhere flesh was exposed and some places where their clothes had been torn away. I screamed in horror and continued to scream all the way into the dank and dirty room with the chair in the middle of it.
Brad dropped me into the chair and smiled a terrifying smile.
“If you run I’m pretty sure she’ll let me have the rest of you,” he whispered with a hint of a hungry growl in his voice, “I do love the way you taste,”
I became light headed from the smell of my own blood on his face being so close to mine.
“Take a walk,” said the woman.
“Sure thing,” he said, winking at me and then strolling out of the door that seemed to lead into some sort of warehouse.
From the look of the room, it had been or should be abandoned. The walls had plaster peeling all over the place. The floor was coated in dirt and trash to the extent that you would think it really had a dirt floor if not for the drain in the middle of the sloping floor. It must have been an abandoned meat packing facility.
I couldn’t see back into the freezer but I knew I had seen at least 30 or more other people in there. I didn’t want to think about whether they were dead or alive. Some looked like they had fresher wounds. Others looked as though they had bled out a while ago. I tried to see as much as I could but there wasn’t much to see. I thought I had seen a desk near the far wall away from the door but the lighting made it hard to see clearly. The steel door leading out into the warehouse looked heavy though Brad had slid it easily enough as he left.
“You’re going to hyperventilate,” said the woman.
She had moved toward where I thought the desk might be. She wasn’t wrong. In my flurry of observation my breathing had picked up rapidly. Mostly, I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I had just seen and where I was. A moment later I smelled something familiar, tobacco.
The woman came around the chair and into full view. I still felt a little light headed. I looked down at my blouse and could see that blood had seeped into it, spreading as blood does in fine silk – like an unchecked fire.
“He is an over zealous eater,” she said, “I forgot to tell everyone that you weren’t on the menu…yet,”
I could feel my heart thumping as I realized that there was a chance I would be back on the menu. Considering the freezer, I had no way of telling how long I would be on that menu. Especially with Brad roaming around outside waiting for a chance to finish me off.
“You’re… You’re,” I choked on the words; they wouldn’t even pass my lips.
“Hungry?” she offered to finish my sentence, “No, not at the moment, thank you,”
I watched her tap a small amount of ash off the end of her cigarette onto the dirt covered floor. As the smoke from her cigarette created a light haze, I realized the room lacked both windows and light. She had a curious look, whatever she was. Her short hair had been cut very close with waves throughout. That vintage look somehow looked updated and modern for her. Even I would have noticed her in a crowd. Perhaps if I had I wouldn’t be on any menu.
“You’re a vampire?” I blurted out.
The woman took a long, thoughtful drag on her cigarette and let the smoke slowly creep from her lips, her eyes slanting.
“Are you fucking with me?” she asked, “Are you seriously fucking with me right now?”
In a flash she was directly in front of me and her hand came across my face in a hard slap. Then she returned to the spot she had been at before, the only proof that she had moved being the sting on my cheek and the small cloud of smoke floating near my face.
I couldn’t scream. I had been so shocked by the sudden movement and the forcefulness of her slap. My face felt as though an entire swarm of bees had just stung the side of my face. My hand instinctively went up to my face to gently caress the spot that she had hit me. My mouth open, in shock, and unable to find any words to express my surprise and my fear at what apparently stood before me, calm but pretty pissed off it seemed.
“If you want to play games we can play my favorite game,” said the woman, her eyes still calculating slits that never left me, “and it involves Brad, a few others, and bleeding you out as slow as possible for as long as possible,”
“What do you want from me?” I asked, my voice a tremble.
“That,” she said, with a pause, “Is a much better question.”
She smiled then. I felt the tension in my body release slightly as this time when she smiled I didn’t see any fangs. It troubled me. Because she looked like any other woman I might see at the grocery, the mall or in the hallway of my building. She looked normal.
“I want to know what you do for the Queen,” said the woman, “What makes you so important? What makes you her favorite?”
“The Queen?” I asked.
Fear struck me as the woman, her short hair cut accentuating her slightest facial expression which now reflected anger, took a single quick step toward me. And then she paused. Her face turned from anger to a look of thoughtful contemplation and I held my breath, heart pounding in my chest as a rabbit fearful of a fox.
“You might know her as Victoria,” said the woman slowly, “And if you do, I want to know how exactly you know her,”
I exhaled, thankful that she had shown some sort of restraint however minor, and my mind began swimming. Victoria, a Queen? What kind of crap was this? I had been kidnapped because some old woman wanted me to chit chat about old days, file her paperwork and date her grandson? However much she had been paying me it wasn’t enough, not to be kidnapped and chewed on.
“Victoria?” I asked, surprised and shocked, “Are you saying Victoria is some sort of Queen? That’s what you’re saying? Queen of what?”
“Queen of all vampires, of course,” murmured the woman.
She still had a thoughtful expression on her face. The hand she held her cigarette with also lent a thumb and ring finger to gently pinching her chin in thoughtful strokes. I tried to take in what this crazy woman, monster, whatever she was, had said. This had all been a giant misunderstanding. I didn’t belong in the middle of whatever kind of mess this was. And no salary, no car, was worth becoming a meal.
“I swear,” I said, trying to convince this woman that was clearly insane, “I have no idea. I don’t want anything to do with this. I’m not involved in anything. Really, I have only been working for her for a little while. She came by my work a ton and she wanted me to date her grandson and …”
And then I had a moment, a thought, as puzzle pieces slid into place. She wanted me to date her grandson and I didn’t. And a little while later he saves me from some random hooligan in the park he doesn’t live anywhere near in the middle of the night. I had been set up from the beginning.
“There it is,” said the woman, coming closer, excited, “What is it? What did you realize?”
“I think Sebastian staged saving me in the park,” I murmured, “He lied to me this whole time…”
She took a drag on her cigarette and looked at me, disappointment on her face as realization of my own sank in.
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