Jesus. Vampires?
“Kate,” I said slowly, “I don't know what happened to you, but I was taken.” Images of the guys in the parking lot, the heavy fists, the bumpy car ride, flashed through my thoughts.
“I was walking to my car. I don't know where I am. Please help me.”
She appeared unsatisfied, but reached up with a reluctant look on her face and started tugging at the chains that pinned my wrists. Before I could blink, I was on my ass on the floor.
“Ow!” I cried as my tailbone screamed in protest.
“You're welcome,” Kate said sarcastically. She retreated to her pile of rags and huddled into the corner of the room, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “How do we get out of here?”
Kate laughed, and it was such a horrible, dejected laugh it made me shiver.
I looked at her questioningly. “What?”
Her face immediately settled back to a blank. “Why don't you got no bites on you?”
“I don't know!” As I said it, I realized the sores I was seeing all over her arms and neck were a combination of bite marks and deep, straight gashes. “Holy shit,” I gasped. “What did they do to you?”
Her steely composure fell momentarily, and was replaced by acute sorrow. “You musta just got here,” she said softly. “I'm surprised they didn't bite you already. You look fulla healthy blood.”
I shuddered.
“There ain’t no gettin’ outta here,” she answered my question. “So quit tryin’. It makes them mad.”
I tried not to have a panic attack as I thought of my options.
“Are we in New Jersey?” I asked.
Kate shrugged. “I’m from Kansas.”
Where the hell were we?
I thought about that for a while. In the middle of Kansas and New Jersey there was ... Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and about ten other states.
“Hey Kate?” I asked.
“Mmm?”
“How long have you been here?”
She sighed. “Today makes ninety–three days.”
I choked on the impossibility of that number. Ninety–three days. I would die if I had to stay there that long.
“I can't believe they haven't killed me yet.” She continued softly. “Thirty is usually the maximum before they kill you.”
I swallowed back tears and screams. “What–why do you think they let you live this long?”
The age and weariness in her tiny voice was almost too much to bear. As were her words. “Apparently,” she said with finality, “the young ones taste better.”
“Wait!” I said. “You said thirty days? How do you know?”
“Because,” she said quietly, “you're the fourth roomie I've had.”
I replayed her words in my head, over and over again. Young girls taste the best. Thirty days.
“You got pretty eyes,” Kate said, looking at me oddly. I smiled sadly. My turquoise blue eyes were my best feature, and people always commented on them.
“Thanks,” I said.
You’re the fourth roomie I’ve had.
Where was I? How was I going to get out of here? I didn't once consider the possibility of not getting out. Only stupid girls got murdered. I would find a way to get out, a way to outsmart these guys ... they just had to come and open the door first. Or the window.
If they were even coming back for us. I'd heard starvation was a nasty way to die.
***
The sun rose the next morning, through a tiny split in the planks of wood that boarded the solitary window. I had slept on and off, not from choice but from pure exhaustion. Still nobody came, and my stomach rumbled loudly in protest. Kate didn't talk or move much, and spent a lot of time completely passed out. I wondered if it was the blood loss or the lack of food. She really did look like crap.
I used the long, empty morning to explore every inch of our shared cell. I had since discovered the door with the handle opened into a bathroom. The faucets had been removed, but there was a nondescript toilet, a rusted bath, assorted bugs and mildew. There was nothing in the way of weapons. Even the heavy–looking lid of the toilet cistern was screwed on tight. Frustrated, I paced from one tiny room to another, racking my brain for an answer that just didn’t seem to exist.
I spent the rest of the day watching a sliver of sunlight move across the floor and dreaming up ways of escape. But still, nobody came. As the sunlight waned and my captivity approached 24 hours, I really did wonder if I would live to see my family again.
***
My second night in the dungeon, someone finally made an appearance. Two of the guys that had taken me – one, whose name I knew was Ryan, and the other, the guy Ryan had called Ford, the guy who wiped my vomit off Ryan's shoes. Ford immediately stormed in, grabbed Kate up off the floor, and dragged her out into the hallway. The door slammed shut and I was left alone with the one who had broken my nose. My heart was beating so loud, I could barely hear anything over the roaring of my blood.
“Stand up,” Ryan said, tossing me a plastic bag full of stuff. I peered into the bag, seeing – and smelling – cold–cut sandwiches, potato chips and a liter bottle of water. Mouth watering, I left the bag on the floor and stood on rubbery legs. I didn't want to obey him, but I sure as hell didn't want him to kick the crap out of me if I stayed sitting down.
“Where am I?” I asked. “What is this place?”
For someone that took young girls and bit them all over, he sure didn't look too excited by my presence.
“What do you want?” I kept throwing questions at him. “Who are you?”
“You are here,” he answered. “If you keep asking questions, I’ll kill you.”
“You broke my nose,” I said accusingly, narrowing my eyes.
He raised his eyebrows, coming closer, peering at my nose. “I could punch you again, straighten it up?”
I pulled my head back, just out of his reach. “I’ll be fine, thanks.”
“Do you need anything? More blankets?”
I stared incredulously at this teetering Jekyll and Hyde who wanted to punch me and get me a blankie in the same conversation. “I need to get home,” I said slowly, as if I were speaking to a moron. “I have my geometry final in two days.”
His tone was dry. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem anymore.”
Fear shot up my spine again. “Look” - I started.
“No, you look,” he said dangerously, putting a hot hand around my throat and squeezing. “I didn’t come in here to make casual conversation.”
I gasped and choked for air.
“Just do what you’re told. Cooperate. It will be over soon enough.”
I nodded, still choking. He released his grip and I fell to my knees, holding my throat with both hands. He waited, staring at me blankly, as I found the air to speak.
As I asked the question I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.
“Are you going to kill me?”
He laughed, but his mask slipped a little, because he faltered. “Of course not.”
“Well then you’re pretty stupid,” I shot. “Letting me see your face. Your license plate. Your tattoo.” I pointed to the black, luminous symbol etched onto his wrist that looked like a pair of eagle’s wings.
“Are you trying to talk me into it?” he asked with a smirk.
I glared at him.
“I know what you’re doing, sweetie. You’re trying to provoke me.”
“How am I doing so far?”
He grinned like the smug bastard he was. “Terribly.”
There was a scream from the hallway. I looked past Ryan, to the open doorway, and then back to him, trying to figure out a way to just get past him.
“Did you bite that girl?” I demanded.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he drawled. He pointed to the bag of food. “Now be a good girl and eat all your dinner.” Before I could respond, he turned and left the room, locking the door behind him.
I forgot about him for the moment. I was starving. I dived at the bag and grabbed the water first, dying to wet my tongue. I opened the bottle and took a small sip, swishing the water around my mouth. It tasted fine, but the seal had been broken, as if it had been refilled. I wondered if it had been drugged and vowed to drink as little as possible.
The sandwich was typical truck–stop fare, white slabs of bread jammed with low–grade salami, but after going so long without eating, it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. The bread, soggy from too much cheap mayonnaise, melted on my tongue as I bit, chewed and swallowed with unnatural speed.
I wondered how it could be that they would feed me if they were going to kill me, and then the door opened, and Kate was thrown back in to the room. I dropped my sandwich and rushed at the door as it was slammed in my face.
Kate was bleeding everywhere. I helped her to sit up as she trembled violently. Her eyes were blank and unseeing, as if she were staring at something that wasn’t there, something full of horror.
“Kate!” I said. “Kate!”
She looked straight through me.
“What happened?” I asked, as I pulled her onto my lap.
And something weird happened. She smiled up at the ceiling, and I tried not to hyperventilate as my palms stuck to her bloodied skin.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked her. “Did you find a way out?”
“He promised me,” she replied dreamily.
“Who promised you? What?”
“His name is Caleb. The chosen one. He promised me.”
I pressed my hands to her bleeding throat, trying to help her.
“What did he promise you, Kate? Did he say he’d let us go?”
She began to cry. “He said he’d let me die, soon.”
I pulled my hands away and tried to see it from her point of view. How, if I’d been stuck in this room as long as she had, maybe I’d rather bleed to death, too.
THREE
Once upon a time, I was just a girl. My name was Mia. I lived a long way away from here. I had a mother and a best friend and a boyfriend I was pretty sure I had fallen completely in love with. I lived most of the time in my dorm room at my high school, because despite any other excuse, I didn’t like to be alone.
I wasn’t the first girl that was taken.
Sure, I had heard all about the girls who were missing, and even though they were only ‘missing’ I knew in my heart that those girls were dead. And my heart scrunched up in agony for them, for their families, just for a moment. Until the thought was replaced by something else, something different, because I couldn’t bear to think about those poor dead girls any longer.
I felt sad for them. But more than that, I felt glad that they had been strangers – not someone I knew, and certainly not me. Things like that didn’t happen to girls like me.
They always happened to someone else, and that’s why I barely blinked as I made my way across an empty football field, through a snow–laden parking lot, to meet a fate I had arrogantly assumed was reserved for other people.
I was a stupid girl.
I paid for it.
FOUR
Time was agony. My stomach twisted in a knot for days on end. Kate wouldn’t wake up anymore. She wasn’t dead, but she may as well have been.
And me, I was so full of anxiety that I threw up every day until there was nothing left but clear bile that burned my throat, my tongue. I wasn’t even hungry any more, not even after I had nothing left inside of me. I was just waiting.
I got a food delivery once a day, the highlight that broke up the long emptiness. Sometimes it was different people, but most of the time it was Ryan. I tried to talk to him. Bargain with him. I asked him how the weather was outside in the place I didn’t know of. After a few days, two things occurred to me: Firstly, that I was becoming used to this ritual.
And secondly, more disturbingly, that I enjoyed his visits, looked forward to them, even.
That realization was terrifying. The fact that this had become my ‘normal’. The fact that I would rather be with a crazed kidnapper than be by myself.
It felt like I had been there for ever and ever.
I kept the water bottles lined up on the edge of the decaying bath. One morning, with sun streaming through the crack in the boards that covered the window, I counted them.
There were twelve. And if Kate had been right about me...
I had eighteen days left.
FIVE
Nobody came for me.
I don’t know why I thought they would.
SIX
Day number thirteen, my lucky number, sparked a change in my routine. Along with my morning meal I got another plastic bag, this one packed with fresh clothes. A pair of jeans. A red t-shirt. Clean underwear. A bar of soap. A toothbrush. And a faucet fitting.
I stared at the bag in horror. Someone wanted me clean, dressed nicely, and with minty breath. It sounds so trivial now, but I agonized over whether or not to clean myself up and change my almost two–week–old outfit. Kate watched me, barely awake, but she didn’t offer any explanation. And I didn’t ask. I was tired of her. She never had anything good to say.
He appeared again in the doorway, dressed impeccably as always in a pair of blue jeans and a black shirt with rolled–up sleeves. “Get up.”
I slid up the wall I was leaning on, holding the faucet fitting in my fist behind my back.
“Give me that.” He lunged forward faster than I could follow, snatched my arm, and pried the faucet fitting from my cold fingers. I stared back at him like a sullen child.
He flicked his gaze up and down my body, clearly unhappy. “You didn’t clean yourself up. Where are your shoes?” He was impatient. I didn’t respond.
He rolled his eyes and took my arm, dragging me out of the room I hadn’t left in two weeks, into a nondescript beige and concrete hallway that seemed to stretch out forever.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice higher than it should have been.
“To see the boss,” he answered. I realized it was one of the first questions he’d answered straight, without a double meaning.
“Who?” I asked. “Caleb?”
He stopped then, tugged my arm so we were facing each other. His brown eyes were surrounded by flecks of gold that seemed to burn into me.
We were alone in a sea of closed doors that all appeared identical. I wondered how many other girls were waiting behind those doors, like me.
“If you keep quiet, it won’t be as bad,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t try your smart–ass tactics on him. He will hurt you very badly, do you understand?”
I looked up at him in utter confusion. “Why do you care?” I asked.
The mask went back on. “I don’t,” he said fiercely. “I’m the one who will have to clean your blood off the floor, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well,” I responded lamely, “If you’re really a vampire, I guess you like that kind of thing.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’re something, you know?”
I scowled at him as we walked further.
At the end of the huge, long hallway there was a door that was different to all the rest. This one opened easily with a regular doorknob, and wasn’t locked behind us. I made a mental note of that.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “You’re not getting out of here.”
“What are you, a mind reader?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.
“Let’s just say I know how teenage girls think.”
“That’s not disturbing at all.” I deadpanned.
We stepped into the room; a large, cavernous cellar lined with long, skinny racks full of wine bottles. The red wine bottles looked like they could have been full of blood. I didn’t want to think about that, though. We walked through the wine stacks when I got an idea.
“Ow!” I groaned, doubling over, using my free hand to steady myself on a waist–high rack of bottles.
“What’s wron
g?” Impatience and concern mixed in one. He released my other hand and I pressed it to my stomach.
“It hurts,” I gasped, wincing and gesturing to my midsection. “Oh, god!”
My fingers closed around the neck of a wine bottle covered in dust. In one snap of my wrist, I brought the bottle up in a wide arc, where it connected with Ryan’s temple.
Only it didn’t. It stopped just shy of his face, an iron claw latching onto my wrist. “Put it back,” he said through gritted teeth, gesturing to the rack with an angry nod. I loosened my grip and the bottle from my fingers, the floor rushing up to smash it to pieces.
And he caught it, faster than my eyes could comprehend. The bastard caught it in midair.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you about the boy who cried wolf?” His eyes drilled into mine.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you she wished she’d aborted you?” I shot back at him.
He just smiled that cold, unaffected smile. “You know, I like you. I might just keep you after Caleb’s finished.”
“I hate you,” I spat. “I’ll kill you, I swear to god.”
“Shut. Up.”
He placed the undamaged bottle back in its spot and then grabbed both my wrists from behind, frogmarching me forwards like a handcuffed inmate.
The air turned colder, if that was even possible. I shivered in my filthy jeans and flimsy camisole. It was ridiculous – I didn’t want to see what was on the other side of these shelves. I would have gladly held on to Ryan’s leg and begged him to take me back to my room and lock me in there. With each bare foot I placed in front of the other, the feeling of disquiet that banded around my chest got louder and tighter, until I could barely breathe. A steady thrumming noise invaded my head, getting louder and more intense the further I got into the room, and I frowned.
Wombstone (The Vampireland Series) Page 2