Safe Hex With a Vampire

by Cassandra Lawson

Chapter Four

  “Why do you run from me?” I asked her.

  “Why do you follow me?” she countered.

  It took me some time to come up with the words to explain my reasons. “I cannot help myself. Maybe you really are a witch, and you’ve cast a spell on me.”

  Excerpt from Roman Draksel’s blog

  Upon regaining consciousness, Aiden came to three realizations. First, his head hurt like hell. Second, he was lying on an uncomfortable bed, and not on the cold ground in an alley. Finally, he realized he was in a cage. Panic like he’d never known set in. He tried to rise from the bed but barely made it to a sitting position before black spots swam in front of his eyes and a wave of nausea washed over him. With a groan, he collapsed back onto the bed. When he moved to cover his eyes, the cotton ball taped to his arm came into view, and he sat up despite the nausea and dizziness.

  Someone had taken a blood sample from him. Someone could prove he wasn’t human, and they had him locked in a cage. They would probably cut him up into little pieces to see what made him tick in an attempt to find an elixir to make them live forever.

  “Fuck!” he shouted to no one in particular before clutching his throbbing head.

  He wondered how long it had been since he’d lost consciousness in the alley. The last thing he remembered was the sickening sound of his own head hitting a brick wall. Either it had only been a very short time since he’d been injured or he’d been hurt pretty badly. In general, he healed fast, but if the injury was bad enough, he depleted his own energy resources before he could fully recover. Those injuries were severe enough, they likely would have killed most people.

  Slowly, he examined his surroundings and worked to calm himself. Now, was not the time to panic. He needed to find a way out of this mess. He was locked in a small cell, caged like an animal. In his little prison he had a small cot, a toilet, a sink, and nothing else. Under normal circumstance, he’d try to break the lock. He was stronger than a human, and the lock looked pretty flimsy. Unfortunately, with the pounding of his head, he could barely walk.

  The room surrounding his cell had what looked like a small laboratory at the far end. There were test tubes and beakers all over, which only added to his fears of being a lab rat. The desk had a laptop computer and a printer on it. Cabinets lined the walls above the desk and lab area. There were no windows, and he could see stairs leading up, so he assumed he was in the basement. Even if he got out of the cell, he had to make it up the stairs and past whoever was at the top. It seemed best to find out who his captors were first. He also wasn’t certain he could walk up the stairs, much less run. His head was pounding from merely sitting up.

  “Whoever put me down here, I demand you show yourself immediately!” he shouted arrogantly. Yelling made his head hurt so badly, he nearly vomited. There was no response except the pounding of his head. After groaning in pain he risked shouting louder, despite the pain he knew it would cause. “Show yourself, you coward!”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Claudia walked down slowly. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Her long hair was pulled back and secured with a large hair clip. It was beautiful hair that fell nearly to her hips, but it was blonde. He was sure it had been black in the alley and in the painting.

  It didn’t make any sense for her to hold him here unless she was afraid Roman would find her. He realized there were details his uncle had left out, and her fear of him could be one of them. Roman’s second wife had feared him and even run off. It was certainly possible the same was true with Claudia. It would have made it easier to decide how to approach her if his uncle had shared more details.

  Aiden forced himself to speak in a calm, reassuring voice. “Claudia, I wasn’t going to hurt you. Roman would have killed me if I harmed you in any way. Let me out of here and we can talk about all this.”

  She stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. It suddenly occurred to him she might not understand him. English hadn’t been her first language, and he had no idea how long she’d been in this country.

  “Do you speak English?” he asked slowly.

  “I speak English,” she replied with no hint of an accent, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about your husband, Roman. He sent me to make sure you and your son are okay. If there’s anything you need, I’m supposed to make sure you have it. Please, you have no reason to fear him. I don’t know what happened before, but he wants me to make sure you’re safe and offer you any help you might need.” He was repeating himself, but her lack of response was unnerving.

  He waited for her to reply, but she just continued to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “Roman won’t force you to be with him,” he assured her. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “My name isn’t Claudia, and I have no husband or son.” She stood closer to the cell and studied him like some exotic animal in a zoo. “What are you, Aiden Draksel?”

  “How do you know my name?” The panic was returning.

  “Your driver’s license,” she explained. “Your blood work shows several strange anomalies.” Her voice was cold, and it reminded him in some ways of Roman’s voice.

  “My blood work? You tested my blood?” Now, he felt really stupid. He already knew someone had taken his blood, and this woman was obviously involved. What he couldn’t figure out was why she would want to test his blood. At first, he’d wondered if she was denying being Claudia out of distrust, but even if his uncle hadn’t told her what they were, she would have figured it out by now. All this left him wondering who he’d followed into the alley.

  “You aren’t Claudia,” he said mostly to himself. “And I am completely screwed.”

  She must have sensed his distress because her voice softened. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she assured him. “My family shares some of your genetic anomalies, but some of them are very unusual. Tell me what you are.”

  Despite her efforts to comfort him, she was still staring at him in a clinical way, and his fear was quickly being replaced by anger. The word, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He embraced the anger because it made him feel more in control.

  What right did she have to talk about him like he was some science experiment?

  He lay back down on the cot, placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Luv,” he started in his most condescending voice, “your imagination is running wild. This sort of thing happens all the time to women who don’t get enough sex. I’d offer to help you out, but cold bitches don’t do anything for me.” He was willing to admit the words were a bad idea almost as soon as he spoke them, but he was madder than hell at the moment.

  “So, I see your genetic anomalies haven’t made you smarter than human men,” she snapped.

  He lost it. Heedless to the pain in his head, he sat up and lunged toward the bars of the cell. “What the hell kind of sick game are you playing?”

  She studied him for a long time before letting out a weary sigh “This is obviously a bad time for us to talk. You have a head injury and need to rest.” Her voice dropped so low, he knew she was muttering to herself. “Hopefully, you’ll be more pleasant when you’re feeling better.”

  “Wait!” he shouted when she started to walk away.

  She stopped and turned toward him.

  He stared at her and reached out his mind toward hers. “You want to let me out of this cell.” He pushed the compulsion into her mind but hit a brick wall.

  “Nice try,” she praised with a smile of appreciation before she turned and walked away.

  He reached through the bars to try to grab her arm, but she was already on her way back up the stairs. When he spun around to stalk back to his cot, the dizziness hit him full force, and he collapsed to the floor. The activity around him seemed unreal. There were footsteps and the jangle of keys. When the fogginess cleared, she was kneeling beside him, checking his pulse.

  “You need to
rest or you’ll hurt yourself.” Her voice was soothing, not nearly as cold as it had been moments earlier.

  Aiden looked up into her eyes for a long moment before speaking. “Why are you keeping me in here?”

  She looked guilty. “I promise we’ll keep your secrets, Aiden,” she assured him. “When you recover, I’ll explain things better. For now, rest. I realize this isn’t the most comfortable place for you, but it’s the best I could manage on short notice.”

  She helped him back to the cot and adjusted the pillows behind his head.

  “You can’t keep me in a cage,” he insisted, embarrassed by how weak his voice sounded. It made him wonder again how badly he’d been injured.

  “We can’t risk keeping you anywhere else,” she explained with a hint of regret as she locked the cell door. “I’ll be back to check on you later.” On those final words, she left the room.

  He wanted to shout and curse her for imprisoning him, but he was too tired. As he drifted off to sleep, he came to a depressing realization—no one was likely to even notice he was missing.