“Anna, what is happening?”
“Grant, stay behind Marshall and Lulu and don’t say a word.”
“What’s going on? Is someone here?”
“Yes. Lea’s here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Grant
Lea walked in through the door at a very deliberate and cautious pace flanked on each side by a male and female vampire. The male was tall and had tussled dirty-blond hair and green eyes that shone much the way Lulu’s did. He was milky white and dressed all in black. The girl on the other side wore a maroon, full-length dress that fit her like a really long tank top and ran down to her calves. She had hair that was so dark brown it was almost black, and her eyes were a dark-amber color like Lea’s but set in dramatically against her pale white face.
Lea looked the same as she had in my nightmares, wearing a purple sequined blouse and slim-fitting jeans that flared at the bottom over her sandals. The ropes of hair danced around her head as she moved. Every step was graceful and dangerous. A terrible jungle cat dressed to look like a woman. They all looked stoic yet ready to pounce on anything that moved—an uneasy dichotomy that unnerved me. The only comfort I had was in the fact none of them had the same blue eyes my Anna had.
“You went through a lot of trouble to get me here, Anna. Now I’m here. What did you want to tell me?” asked Lea with an evil sneer.
“Well, now that you are here will you hear us out?”
“Us? Does us include the blood bag over there?”
Lea made a quick gesture with her head in my direction, and I saw Lulu, Marshall and Anna tense. I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
“Leave him out of this, Lea. He is only here for his own protection. I am referring to me and my group.”
“And I see you have a new member,” Lea said as she gestured to Gabriel. Gabriel sat up straight when he realized they were discussing him, and Cat crouched in a defensive stance near him. What sounded like a low growl rolled out from her chest.
“Yeesh, a little touchy, Cat,” said Lea with a laugh.
“You stay away from him.”
Anna raised her hand and silenced Cat before she could say anymore.
“This is counterproductive. Lea, this is Gabriel. Cat found Gabriel beaten and left for dead in an alley. He had lost a significant amount of blood and was going to die. We changed him in order to save his life. He is now a part of our group.”
“Do you keep all the members of your group in a cage?”
“Absolutely not. He is only in there now because he is young and Grant is here.”
“Well, kid, if you ever want to come have some fun, you can come join us,” said Lea as she nodded her head to Gabriel through the bars. She must have looked positively terrifying, even to a vampire, because he inched a few steps back to get closer to Cat. Cat growled again at Lea as her eyes began to fill up with black ink.
“Cat, that’s enough. Lea, please can we put this other stuff aside and talk?”
“Sure. Why not? Talk, Anna. What’s on your mind?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
“Intriguing, go on.”
“I need your help.”
“Yes, you said that before. What do you need my help with?”
“We’ve found another one.”
“Another what?”
“Another prison.”
The air in the room seemed to run out. The gravity of Anna’s words were not lost on anyone, even Lea’s stone-like companions. I thought of the horrible story Anna had just told me. I got chills thinking that same scenario could be playing itself out somewhere else as we spoke. To watch a scary movie or hear a frightening story is all right when the bad guy or evil place is killed or blown up in the end. You can sleep at night knowing the evil is gone, but what do you do when the movie ends with the knowledge that the evil is still loose and wreaking havoc elsewhere in the world? It must have had the same effect on Lea, because her words seemed to catch in her chest, and the next ones she spoke seemed to come out accompanied by a growl.
“Where is it?”
“It’s a place called Saint Lawrence Prison outside of Midland, Texas.”
“How did you find it?”
“I didn’t. Chloe and Harris did. They stopped in to see us as they were passing through town. They’ve been travelling all over the South, as you know, and they came across rumors of a cursed prison. They investigated to find traces of laboratories, scientists and inmates scared half to death to even sneeze out of turn.”
“Did they do anything?”
“No. They only did surveillance, and they came to me to report what they’d found. Two vampires alone can’t take on an entire prison, especially a prison full of people who know what we are.”
“Where are Chloe and Harris now?”
“They left. They only came to take shelter for one day and to tell me what they had found in Texas. They chose to keep moving and seek out other places like this one for us. We feel we have to do something here. We can’t let others suffer as we suffered, but I am not confident that four experienced vampires and one inexperienced one will be enough to take this on. So now we come to the reason why I have been trying to talk to you. We need your help to take down this prison. This is that war we knew was coming. This is an opportunity for revenge.”
Lea contemplated this question for a while as she searched Anna’s eyes for something deceptive or untrue. She seemed to be trying to see if she was lying.
“Let me confer with my group.”
“Go ahead.”
Lea turned her back on us for the first time and spoke in hushed whispers with the male and female vampire at her side. I kept looking for some sort of flash of emotion to give away their decision one way or another, but I could only see tense expressions. I caught the eye of the female, and she stared at me like I was the lunch special at a diner. I quickly averted my eyes and decided not to stare at them anymore.
When the discussion ended, Lea turned to face Anna again.
“All right. We want to help.”
“Good.”
“But if we are going to stick our necks out for this, we would like payment.”
“What sort of payment?”
“We want you to hand him over,” Lea said with a smirk as she pointed a finger in my direction.
“Absolutely not!”
Lea and the two vampires snickered. They certainly had a sick sense of humor.
“I thought you might say that. All right then, I want ten thousand dollars for our trouble and expenses. We don’t all live as lavishly as you do.”
“I can’t help it if we have inspired some generous benefactors.”
I wondered what benefactors meant. Maybe more grateful vampire admirers like the hotel owner? Even after Katrina, this house couldn’t have been that cheap.
“Revenge is not enough for you?”
“Once maybe, but I feel like bigger battles are ahead of us. I need to plan for my people’s comfort, and you guys are obviously flush with cash here.”
There was a contemplative pause.
“That I can agree to.”
“Good, then it is settled.”
Lea stuck her hand out for Anna to shake, but Anna did not take it right away.
“Uh uh. Not yet. I have some boundaries. If we are going to pay that much money, I want what I pay for.”
Lea retracted her hand and crossed her arms in an irritated manner.
“What are these boundaries?”
“For one, you need to respect the pact we made from now on. No slipping and killing the innocent.”
“Agreed.”
“Secondly, if you must kill to eat while we are on this mission, you must be discreet, and again, they must be criminals.”
Lea rolled her eyes and muttered, “Agreed.”
“Lastly, you must leave Grant alone and allow him to go in peace.”
Of course, this made Lea turn her attention to me and begin mocking me with a
mean, playful tone.
“Aw, but weren’t we having a fun time, Grant? I mean, I know you are gaga over Anna here, but we did have some fun, didn’t we?”
“If that’s your sick idea of fun,” I retorted.
“It is,” she said back sadistically.
“Enough, Lea. Either you agree to all three of these conditions, or we do not have a deal.”
Lea turned her gaze from me to Anna and became very serious again. She cocked her head sideways and looked at Anna with that same curiosity I had seen in Anna and Lulu when they were studying something. She was trying to figure Anna out.
“Agreed,” she said at last.
“Good.”
Anna stuck her hand out and Lea shook it hard for a moment before they released each other. I allowed myself a moment to imagine who would win in an arm-wrestling match.
“How do we know when we are going and what the plan is?”
Anna grabbed a small black cell phone from a nearby end table and tossed it gently to Lea. Lea caught it with one hand and looked at Anna warily.
“I’ll call you with the details.”
“When do we get our money?”
“I will give you half when you arrive to begin the journey and the other half when the mission is completed and you haven’t broken any of my conditions.”
“How do I know that you will pay up afterwards?”
“I think you know where I live,” Anna retorted sarcastically.
Lea smiled a terrible smile. “Point taken.”
There was a brief awkward silence for a moment as Lea and her crew began to make their way to the front door again. She turned right before they were about to exit.
“Come on, gang. Let’s get out of the suburbs. The sun will be up in about an hour. Anna, I will be awaiting your call.”
After a quick exchange of nods, they left so quickly and quietly it was like a soft breeze had exited the house instead of three ferocious vampires. My shoulders relaxed, but the others remained tense until they heard the car safely drive out of the driveway and away from the house.
It occurred to me that those three must have been extraordinarily dangerous to put all of these strong vampires on edge like this. Cat turned to Anna.
“I hope you know what you are doing, Anna. I don’t trust her or Jackson and Bridgette.”
“I know a little more about Lea than you guys do. Out of all of us, Lea is the strongest and best fighter. I would rather go into this with eight instead of just five for our own safety. True, I don’t completely trust her, but I do trust she doesn’t want that prison open and running any more than we do. The money is just her way of taking some power back from me.”
“And your conditions?”
“Are my way of protecting the innocent,” Anna answered as she looked at me across the room with genuine concern.
Chapter Fifteen
Grant
“Absolutely not!”
“But, Anna, please listen to me,” I pleaded as I followed her around the room.
The others just stood in silence, watching me follow the tiny blond girl as she paced back and forth, agitated by my proposition. It was an odd sight for anyone who might have been spying on us, like watching a group of vampires following a tennis match.
“I won’t hear any more of this, Grant.”
“Please just hear me out.”
“I heard you. You want to stay here and help us instead of going back home to college where you’ll be safe. You have no idea what danger you are placing yourself in. I won’t allow it.”
“Anna, it’s my life and my choice. Please, I want to help.”
In all honesty, that was the truth but it wasn’t the entire truth. I was drawn to Anna, and even though this new world I had fallen into terrified me, she made me feel safe and secure under her protection. I didn’t want to leave. It was raw and dangerous, but I felt alive. No cookie-cutter world with white Christmases. No perfect TV family with the Norman Rockwell home. This was adventure and horror, and for the first time, those words didn’t just label the type of book I was reading or the movie I had watched. These things were really happening to me. To me of all people. How could I go back to my school knowing what I knew? How could I possibly go back to writing essays and attending study groups when I worried about Anna and these vampires fighting to the death in some prison in the middle of Texas?
“It is out of the question. I can’t believe you would even consider this. How many times do you need to be near death before you just go home?”
“I don’t want to go home, Anna. I want to stay and help you. It’s my choice.”
“Yes, but it will be your blood on my hands when it’s over.”
I saw she was getting frustrated and I saw the pain draw itself to the very surface of her face as her patience visibly waned. Not since she had told me her story had I seen the anguish and regret she showed me now. Those people she had killed had died needlessly in her eyes, and she would never forgive herself for what she had done even though she would have starved had she done otherwise.
“I will go write about you and tell the world if you don’t let me stay.”
I don’t know why I said it. I guess it was my last-ditch effort to trap her into letting me stay with her. Maybe my lily-white upbringing had made me more trusting and stupid than I realized, because I soon found myself standing in a room with five black-eyed, growling vampires staring back at me.
Instant regret filled my mind when I turned to see them all with their fangs extended past their lips and their haunting eyes boring deep into my soul. The term looking right through you took on a whole new meaning, and I began to panic. My heart fluttered wildly.
“I didn’t mean it, everyone. I’m s-s-sorry.”
“Watch what you say next time, boy,” warned Marshall through his clenched fangs. “We may not eat you, but we have plenty of ways to keep you from talking.”
He was terrifying, and I tried desperately to shrink in acknowledgment. It wasn’t hard because I was so completely horrified at that moment. Man, I was stupid. When Anna touched my shoulder, I jumped and stepped away quickly like a frightened mouse. A loud round of laughter broke out among the other vampires. I was relieved to see all of their eyes return to their abnormal hues, and the tense air was lifted like a cloud as they laughed at my expense. Even Cat couldn’t help but laugh. I managed a tense breath of a chuckle, and when I looked at the girl with her hand on my shoulder, I saw that Anna was the only one not laughing.
“We need to talk in private,” she practically whispered to me. It was no use whispering. I knew the others could probably hear us, but I agreed in a hushed whisper back to her all the same.
She led me down one of the long, dark hallways past several closed doors until we reached one door that was slightly ajar at the end. Most of the house was poorly lit, and I deduced it had something to do with the vampire’s night-time vision and not that they were trying to save on the electric bill.
We walked through the door to find an elegantly simple room dimly lit by a single lamp on a bedside table. It was painted dark blue, which caused the stark-white crown molding to contrast in a very designer way. There were a few pieces of well-framed art on the walls, and the furniture looked antique or at least faux antique. It reminded me a little of the hotel room we had stayed in, and that’s when it hit me. I turned to see Anna standing like a perfect accessory in the room that fit her so perfectly. She fit perfectly in this room because this was her room. She had brought me to her room.
“I brought you here to show you something,” she said softly, and that bell of a voice of hers chimed in my ear and sent my heart racing with possibilities. Nerves took over, and I trembled internally as she stepped closer to me.
It happened in a flash. It was so quick I never had time to process what happened to me. One minute, I was standing in the room as she walked over to me, and the next, I was soaring through the air and landing hard on my back on her antique bed. She had grab
bed me and flung me across the room and onto her bed, and the sturdy bed had barely flinched upon impact. I felt no pain, only shock. Suddenly, she was on top of me with both of her knees pinning my arms down and one hand over my throat. Her eyes were black and she was baring her fangs in a menacing sneer just inches from my face.
Terror choked any words I might have had in my throat, and I was only able to stare at her in horror. I clutched the black fabric that covered the bed in an effort to pull myself up, but I might as well have been struggling against steel. I felt the heat from the skin of her bare knees that were pressed into my arms pinning them down. The terror I had tasted only minutes ago swiftly returned.
Just as suddenly as it began, the attack ended. With little emotion on her face, Anna retracted her fangs, returned her eyes to their brilliant blue and released my arms from her knees. She still held her hand on my throat for a moment longer as she spoke, and I didn’t dare move.
“You see, Grant. This was a demonstration as to how easy it is for me or any other vampire. They engineered us too well. You would have no chance against one of us, and your strange curiosity puts you in even more danger because you trust us too readily. I brought you to my bedroom to prove a point. I would never hurt you, but don’t doubt that I or any other vampire could very easily. Lea and her crew would if given the opportunity, and they would do it with even more ease than I just showed you. You are no more than a meal to them, Grant. A walking, talking doggy bag. Now do you see why this is a dangerous place for you to be?”
She gently released my neck and allowed me to sit up on her bed and face her. At first, I thought the demonstration had been a little much, but when I checked myself over and found no bruises or sore spots, I realized she’d never meant it to hurt me. She was just trying to scare me to get me to go home.
“Look, Anna, I didn’t mean what I said out there. I just felt backed into a corner. I don’t want to go, even after your little demonstration.”
“Aren’t you worried for your own safety?”
“Yes, but you will protect me, and the others will too. I could be a real help, Anna. I mean, I’m a journalism major. I’m great at research. Besides, you might need someone who can be one hundred percent during the day. You know, a good human scout.”
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