I smiled. I couldn’t help it. His response was so simple and sweet, especially compared to Nik and Josh. Why was this happening to me?
“That’s really sweet, Jim,” I said, trying to be honest and gentle at the same time. “But I’m not really interested in dating you… or anyone,” I added when I could see the hurt playing across his features. “My life is too much of a wreck for me to think about boys—men—right now.”
“All right,” he said with a misplaced smile. “We’ll put Sedgrave in the ground and then I’ll take you to dinner.”
Before I could say anything, Jim scurried up the stairs and disappeared.
What just happened? my mind asked me. It was a good question, one to which I did not have the answer.
I was just starting to remember how to move again when a soft chuckle stiffened my spine. I knew that laugh. Emma appeared at the top of the stairs, an evil smile pulling half her mouth up into a smile.
“You still don’t get it, little vampire,” she said, her voice almost sounding affectionate.
“Get what?” I demanded.
“You don’t get why all these men are suddenly wildly in love with you.”
“I just figured they were all delusional.”
“In a sense,” she admitted before approaching me. “Tell me, when did all this start?”
“The romancing?”
Emma nodded.
“Um… I don’t know exactly. A couple months ago, I guess.”
“Not long after Sedgrave was raised?”
“No, I guess not.”
“And Sedgrave’s greatest weapon is what?”
“His… charisma,” I said slowly, the dots connecting in my mind. “And I am connected to him…”
Emma smiled and nodded condescendingly.
I let out a gusty sigh and smiled back.
“Why are you smiling?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “It’s not real. Whatever happens, whether I die or we win, this will all go away in the end.”
Emma smiled too.
“The question is,” I continued, “what to do until that time.”
“I think you’re doing just what you need to. Keep them at arm’s length while you can.”
I nodded and smiled again. This was the first time Emma and I had enjoyed such a peaceful conversation. Maybe, just maybe, we could come to terms with each other. I think the very fact I was not actually interested in any of my new suitors helped her. Emma was the type of woman to like the attention of men. I, on the other hand, only like it when it came one at a time.
Chapter Three
I opened my eyes and stared at the drab walls of my little concrete bunker. If I lived through this, I will decorate my room, I decided as I nestled further into my covers. I didn’t want to get up, though I knew I needed to. Tonight we would be visiting Richard, and Mikhail had specifically invited me. He didn’t want me running around Olympia chasing after him, as I had the last time he’d visited Richard.
Little did he realize, if he didn’t bring me along, I probably would have just gone back to bed. Or maybe that was exactly why he was insisting I came along. Maybe my primus knew my current struggle with apathy, fear, and anxiety. Knowing Mikhail, and his years of existence, it was probably the latter.
Before I could muster up the energy to climb out of my narrow bed, Tereus pushed his way through the cat door I had installed, jumped up onto my bed, and began to lick my toes.
“Stop,” I mumbled, nudging his chest with my foot.
“Wake up,” he ordered. “The others are starting to gather. They’re waiting for you.”
I mumbled a few choice words to myself as I pushed the blankets off and climbed to my feet. I dressed quickly, having showered before I went to bed. Using the bathroom supplies I kept in my room, I managed to tame my wild red hair into a French braid. I ignored the makeup supplies Mikhail had purchased for me; the last thing I needed was to look nice for the men.
I followed Tereus up to the main level and, sure enough, found a small group standing in the hall in front of Mikhail’s office. The group included Travis, Emma, Josh, Nik, Jim, Mikhail, and Helen, who was looking tired for all her late night activities with us. I moved to stand between Helen and Emma. Emma gave me a knowing smile and draped her arm over my shoulders. She was a bit taller than me, allowing her to stand in this position comfortably. I glanced at the others, who stared at us, eyes the size of beach balls.
Each of them were aware of the antagonism subsisting between the two of us. Our sudden camaraderie must have looked as though Israel and Iran were skipping down the Ginza, holding hands.
“We ready?” I asked in a chipper voice.
I watched as the group blinked a few times and turned their attention on Mikhail, who had a playful smile pulling on his lips. He nodded and headed to the bunker’s side entrance. Just like all the other times, Jim had organized a caravan of enormous SUVs. We were a small group, this time only needing two giant Yukons.
I climbed into the very back of the first SUV, followed by Emma. I think Helen would have joined us, but her age made climbing into the back rather difficult. Instead, she accepted Mikhail’s assistance into the front seat next to our driver. Mikhail and Jim took the middle row, leaving the others to ride in the second SUV.
A few minutes later we reached the flooring company Richard’s seethe used as a front. Richard was the primus of the only other seethe in the Olympia-Tumwater-Lacey metropolis. He was a complete bastard, and the mastermind behind the efforts that raised Sedgrave in the first place. Shortly after the warlock had been raised, Sedgrave abandoned Richard’s seethe without making them daywalkers—a little parlor trick of his.
Richard was rather embittered toward the warlock. Though he wasn’t willing to stand with us against his runaway pet, he wouldn’t stand in our way. I just hoped Mikhail would be able to change his mind and get him to give us some useful information.
We dismounted our chariots and followed Mikhail to the front door of the flooring company. Normally they had a man on duty, like at our seethe, but no one answered the door. Mikhail glanced around the dark neighborhood before knocking against the glass windows. If any vampire was within their own deep bunker, they would hear Mikhail’s noise. We waited a long time, growing more and more nervous as we stood outside a closed business.
“This is ridiculous,” grumbled Mikhail before he drove his fist into the glass door, shattering it with one punch.
I had never seen Mikhail lose his temper and entered the building wide eyed like everyone else. We followed our primus through the flooring company and to a nondescript door placed in the back wall. As we walked I noticed a fine layer of dust on the displays and a light flashing on one of the phones, indicating there were twenty-three unanswered voicemails waiting.
“Does it seem…?” I began but was quickly shushed by Nik.
I kept my mouth shut, though I felt certain something was very wrong. We descended the steps into the bunker. The last time I had been down into Richard’s seethe, he had been sacrificing me for the sake of raising Sedgrave. It had been a painful, harrowing experience. Though I hadn’t died from it, the ritual had taken many of my memories. Some had returned, but most of the ones from my human days were still gone. I held my breath to keep from having a panic attack and followed the others.
Holding my breath, I missed the cue telling everyone else that something was wrong. Suddenly Mikhail jumped forward and pushed the doors of their main hall open. Inside was a sight I will never forget, no matter how many rituals I take part in.
The floor was littered with pile after pile of ash. Across the furniture and mixed with the ash lay human bodies, some burned, some stabbed, and some shot—all dead. The ash, I belatedly realized, was the remains of the vampires belonging to this seethe.
I walked into the room, stepping over one woman who laid sprawled on her stomach, her face pillowed by a pile of ash. Her maroon dress had flipped up, revealing her underwear. I knelt
down and pulled the fabric back to make her descent again, sudden tears brimming in my eyes.
“Leave it,” said Mikhail as he watched me. “Nothing you can do for them now.”
“It may not seem like much, but if I were her, I’d want someone looking after my modesty.”
We continued to move through the large room, occasionally checking the pulse of a body, but they all proved to be dead.
“Search the rest of the seethe,” ordered Mikhail in a subdued voice, as though he had reached his limit of death and destruction.
I followed Josh, descending to the lowest level of the seethe. We assumed it was laid out like our own home, and sure enough we found the little door leading down to the human level. I had never been down to the level designated for our own humans, so I didn’t know what to expect.
What we found looked more like a fraternity house. The entire level was one enormous room with cement pillars holding the ceiling up, except for one small kitchen and a community bathroom. Running along the two long walls of the rectangle was hundreds of bunk beds, with small dressers tucked between each set of beds. In the center of the room lay a variety of entertainment devices: video game stations, pool tables, ping-pong tables, long tables for general use, short book cases placed back to back, etc. The room was unnervingly empty, the creepiness factor increased by the room’s sound system pumping out Melanie Martinez’ “Dollhouse.”
If you haven’t listened to that song, try it out. Super creepy even when it’s not being played in the basement of a destroyed vampire seethe.
I glanced at Josh. Like me, he wasn’t breathing as we tried to listen past the unusual music.
“There’s someone here,” I mouthed to Josh. He nodded.
I listened harder, almost certain I wasn’t hearing a heartbeat, but rather the muffled sniffles of someone crying.
“Vampire?” Josh mouthed to me.
I nodded. I motioned with two fingers for him to head down one side of the divided room, while I would search the other half. I felt very military-like as I slipped around the first ping-pong table on silent toes. Josh obeyed my silent orders and searched his half.
We moved slowly, always trying to listen to any noise not being produced by the stereo system. The song switched to Dave Matthew’s “Gravedigger.” I glanced at Josh in a break in the long line of entertainment devices. The look on his face screamed: “Is someone doing this on purpose?”
I gave him a look that said, “No shit.”
We continued our search, ducking behind each bunk bed and glancing under the furniture. I felt my breathing speed up as we continued down the room that would not end.
How many humans did they have? I wondered as I passed another set of bunk beds.
We were nearing the end of the room when I heard a faint clink. I stopped, freezing in my crouched position.
Had Josh made that sound?
I held my breath and opened my mouth a little, doing everything I could to hear beyond the music. Finally, I heard a faint breath from somewhere to my left. I dropped to the ground, catching myself with my vampire-strong arms and peeked under the long row of beds.
Hidden beneath the bed I had just passed lay a woman, tears making tracks through the dust on her face. In a different situation, I would have had to do a double take: She looked just like Audrey Hepburn, short cropped bangs included. Only, I don’t think I ever saw a Hepburn movie where she looked quite so frightened.
I opened my mouth to speak, but suddenly realized I had no idea what to say.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked, feeling dumb, especially as the stereo switched Taylor Swifts’ “Shake it off.” To my disgust, I felt my toes begin to move with the beat of the stupid music streaming through the room’s built-in sound system.
The woman glanced around as Josh approached me and dropped to the ground. I watched as she worked moisture into her mouth.
“Who are you?” she asked.
I looked at Josh, surprised to find someone who didn’t recognize me as the cause of all the mystical world’s problems.
“I’m Ashley. This is Josh. We’re part of the Olympia Seethe. We came with our primus to see Richard and found a bit of a disaster. Are you hurt?” I asked.
She shook her head before glancing around, being sure that we were alone.
“There are a few more of us upstairs,” I said, wanting to give her full disclosure so that our friends didn’t take her by surprise and further scare her. “But they’re not going to hurt you.”
We all paused, waiting to see if she’d speak again.
“Can you come out?” I asked when it became clear she had nothing more to say.
Slowly, she nodded before scooting out from under the bed. We all stood there for a moment, listening to Swift telling us that “the haters gonna hate.”
“I’m Ashley,” I repeated, mostly to distract myself from the music. “And you are?”
“Sahara,” she said.
“You ready to come upstairs?” asked Josh in a soft voice.
“Is everyone gone?” Sahara asked.
“You mean your seethe?”
She nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re the only one left alive. Can you come upstairs and tell our primus what happened.”
It took another fifteen minutes to get her upstairs. We walked up the stairs slowly, letting her adjust to the uncomfortable quiet of the empty seethe. Jim appeared in the second level and stared at Sahara as though he was looking at a ghost. I wasn’t sure how old Jim was, but I had a feeling he had grown up watching Audrey Hepburn films.
Finally, we got the flighty woman up to the main hallway. Josh ducked into the macabre room to get Mikhail. We didn’t think Sahara could handle the sight of her destroyed seethe.
Mikhail quickly slipped out of the main hall and stared at Sahara, a smile playing on his normally stoic face. I was enjoying seeing the men stare at a woman other than myself.
“Mikhail, this is Sahara. We found her on the human level.”
“What happened here, Sahara?”
Sahara gave a loud sniffle as fresh tears pricked her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she wailed. “I was down in my room, and I heard a mighty crash, then people crying, and a horrible racket. I ran. I ran down to the human level and hid.”
“Why weren’t the human’s down there?” asked Mikhail.
“They were having a party. I wasn’t allowed to come.”
“Why not?” I asked, surprised that Richard would ostracize one of his seethe members.
“Richard didn’t like me.”
“Why?” Mikhail asked as though she had said Richard didn’t like puppies or ice cream.
“I was one of Richard’s donors, and he accidentally turned me. He didn’t want me to be a vampire. I didn’t want it either,” she added as fresh tears streamed down her face.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “I don’t think many of us wanted this life.”
She nodded pitifully.
Nik appeared suddenly and said, “They’re all dead,” completely ignoring Sahara.
“What now?” I asked, rubbing Sahara’s shoulder comfortingly. “With the broken door, the authorities will be here soon.”
Mikhail pulled out a sleek cell phone and punched a few numbers. “Samuel, get a cleanup crew to Richard’s seethe immediately. A big one. Bring something to demolish the building too.”
“What happened,” we heard Samuel say on the other end of the call; vampires have very good hearing.
“Richard’s seethe has been taken out. We need to clean it up before the authorities notice.” Mikhail hung up before saying anything else. “Jim, get up there and put a name tag on, just in case a police car drives by.”
Jim nodded once and ran toward the staircase.
“Now how are we going to find the artifacts?” I asked, feeling a new despair weigh down on my shoulders. I had told myself I didn’t expect them to succeed in saving me, but hope was a hard thing t
o keep down when you truly needed it.
“Sahara, my dear, have you heard Richard talk any about the sacrifice?”
She hesitated a second before speaking. “I was human back when he sacrificed that girl.”
I suddenly realized she had no idea I was “that girl”.
“But I do know where he kept his files.”
Thirty minutes later, we were piled back in the SUVs, with both Sahara and Richard’s files safely inside. Hopefully he had put some of his plans into writing.
It had taken Samuel most of the night to deal with the mess. They removed and incinerated the bodies; evidently Mikhail had a crematory in his pay. After this was done, Samuel and his helpers did some tricky demolition, somehow making a C4 explosion look like a gas leak. I didn’t ask any technical questions, partly because I doubted I would understand the answer, but mostly because I didn’t care. Instead, I joined those returning to our own seethe and went back to bed.
I woke the next evening to a hard knock on my door. Tereus rolled and stretched, growling his own protestations as I grumbled to myself. Once I had made certain I had actually bothered with pajamas, I called to the knocker.
The door creaked open and Josh poked his head in, a smile already on his face. I smiled back. Despite my desire to keep things in perspective with him and the other men, especially now that I knew the reason for their infatuation, I couldn’t help but smile when Josh smiled. Josh had his own charisma. It was nothing supernatural. He had probably been just as joyful when he was a human—though the ghost dog following him everywhere he went didn’t hurt his image.
“Mikhail wants to see you upstairs. ‘Fraid he’s got everyone gathered.”
“What now?” I grumbled, climbing out of bed.
“He wants to discuss what we can do next.”
“What else is there to do?” I asked more to myself.
I motioned for Josh to turn around. He did so, his nose pointing at the corner. With his back to me, I scrambled out of my pajamas and into a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I ignored Tereus watching me. He had seen me stark naked so many times it didn’t really matter. At least it didn’t matter until the fae started making cat-calls. All pun intended.
The Series that Just Plain Sucks: The Complete Trilogy Page 51