Vicious

by Olivia Rivard

  “What prison are you visiting around here, little lady?”

  I quickly brought myself to the here and now. We were about to get the reaction we had been waiting for. We needed some sort of proof this place was what we thought it was before we raided it, and getting the locals’ reaction to the place was important evidence.

  “Saint Lawrence Prison. I don’t think it’s terribly far from here,” Anna said so sweetly and without pretense she almost fooled me.

  The men’s faces went white. The main guy we had been talking with, Chuck I believe his name was, let his mouth drop open a little in astonishment. His eyes betrayed a knowing that was unmistakable. Yes, they knew Saint Lawrence Prison without a shadow of a doubt, and they were terrified of the place.

  The men all promptly stood and placed some money down on the bar for their drinks. They began to move away from their chairs and toward the door when Anna looked up at Chuck innocently.

  “Did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean to offend.”

  He stopped and looked back at her before he sighed. “No offense, little lady, but just trust me that you don’t want to go anywhere near that there prison. I wouldn’t ask anyone else ’bout it either. People don’t like talkin’ ’bout it. It’s a damned place.”

  She nodded solemnly to the men as they turned and exited the bar. The bartender, not having heard the conversation, glared at us for driving his good-paying regulars away. We ordered another bucket to compensate.

  “Well,” Anna began quietly to me, “at least we know it is the real deal. The prison is truly what we think it is.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I think we have all the proof we need to set up the visitation for tomorrow.”

  Just then, I noticed Anna staring across the bar near the dartboard. Four obviously drunk men were surrounding a woman who had either had way too much to drink or had been drugged. She stammered about and frequently wrapped her arms around one or more of the men for support. Her eyes could barely open as her mouth lolled agape, and the men were leading her out of a back door hastily and quietly to what I assume would be an unconscious gang bang in the back of one of their pickups. The tell-tale signs were there.

  I felt nauseous and began to go after them when Anna put a hand on my chest to stop me. She delicately hinted at the small group already following close behind the men. It was Lea, Bridgette and Jackson, and they were planning to follow the men outside and drain them dry. I knew this like Anna knew this.

  “Are we going to let it happen?”

  “If we don’t,” started Anna, “that poor girl will get violated against her will.”

  “We could go stop them and call the police,” I said, unsure.

  “This is, I’m afraid, where my morals and Lea’s morals collide, dear Grant,” Anna said thoughtfully. “I promised her blood as long as it was the blood of someone criminal. These men are arguably criminal. It’s overly apparent this is not the first time they have done this. I watch people a lot, and I can tell the repeat offenders when I see them. Now if it were me, I would beat the men, take the girl to a hospital and call the police. However, Lea has another type of justice. It is not for me to judge her. I did promise her blood.”

  I looked at Anna as she watched the scene unfolding in front of us with a troubled expression. This is not what she wanted, but she was making a concession because she needed Lea’s help tomorrow. I wondered if discovering that picture had anything to do with this.

  The men had just exited the door when Anna grabbed my hand and walked quickly with me to intercept Lea’s group before they disappeared after them. I thought that she was going to stop them altogether and apparently, so did Lea.

  “Don’t start with me, Anna,” snapped Lea angrily before Anna could say a word. “You promised us blood. Real blood. These men deserve it. Or would you like me to let that girl get raped out back?”

  Anna gave her a deadpan stare. She leaned in very close to Lea and spoke so softly that I barely even heard her, and I was standing three feet to her right.

  “All I ask is that you spare the girl. She is innocent.”

  Lea was taken aback, and she looked at Anna very seriously with that cocked-head expression the vampires got when studying something confusing. After considering only a moment, she replied simply, “She will be spared.”

  They separated from us then and exited out of the back door. I shuddered to think of what was going to happen next to those men, no matter how despicable and vile they seemed. Anna saw my reaction.

  “Like I said, Grant, you should not confuse me and Lea as good and evil. I don’t really know the meaning of the word enough to judge myself one way or another. Life is a series of choices, and sometimes you compromise in ways you’d rather not to in order to reach what you think to be a more important goal. All I can do is make the choices I think are right and hope against hope that they balance out some of my compromises. I’m not proud of this, and I hate for you to see me this way. However, I’m much more worried about the evil you will see in me tomorrow at the prison. I’m not sure if after that you will ever be able to see me as good again.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Anna

  The plan was a good one, and one Grant had come up with himself. He was definitely proving to be more of a help in this mission than I had originally anticipated, and the more he showed his capabilities, the more a certain knot of tension in my chest began to unravel. He knew more about computers and researching than any of us did, and he seemed to know how to work social and business situations to our advantage. Being vampires and looking the way we did separated us from the human community more than I wanted to admit.

  I had worried about bringing Grant along, and I’d used the threat of exposure as an excuse to give in to his request to come with us. Then I’d worried I had allowed him to come purely because of my attraction and feelings for him since I did not believe he would ever expose us like he proclaimed in his half-hearted threat. Now, his worth was really becoming apparent, and I was pleased to see the others respond to him positively and with respect rather than an object of childlike interest.

  I repressed a smile as he phoned in the prisoner visitation request to the Saint Lawrence prison. I wasn’t used to showing a lot of emotion, nor was I used to feeling a lot of emotion, but I needed to rein in my subtly loving looks since Lea was watching us like a hawk.

  “Five thirty then. Thank you, sir,” stated Grant over the phone in a very professional manner.

  He ended the call and looked up at the vampires who were all staring at him patiently crammed in the little hotel room he and I were sharing.

  “It’s set. Visitation ends at six o’ clock, but they don’t schedule visitation past five thirty. The sun is timed to set at six thirteen tonight. By the time Anna and I go in pretending to be visitors, scope out the place and return to the front it should be dark enough for easy maneuvering with your shades on. Once inside, any windows around won’t be filtering in much light at all, so that shouldn’t be much of an issue. Anna will have already found the main entrance to the labs, and we can go from there.”

  A round of respectful nods moved about the crowd. Only Lea sat stoic, eyeing Grant in a way that made me intensely nervous. We went over the particulars for a while longer and designated our meeting place and time meticulously before everyone departed for their own rooms to turn in for the day. This left Grant and I finally and blissfully alone.

  He looked tired and a little frazzled. Watching life and death play out in front of me every day was quite normal for me, but not for a normal human like Grant. All carnal thoughts I had about him faded in the realization that he needed rest, and a sex session with me might not be welcomed at the moment. I disappointedly understood, but at the same time, I wrestled with this new fiery need for him that I had previously not known.

  Physical affection had never been something that interested me much until Grant had come into my life, and now I didn’t know how to deal with the inte
nse wanting I felt for him. This might be our last day together, because who knew what was in store for us tomorrow. Making love was high on my list of ways to spend my last possible day on earth. I could think of nothing better than to be intimate with this man that I had all of these new, intense feelings for. But I turned toward my suitcase and sighed down at my pajamas. Restraint and control had always been my strong suit, and I clung to those old familiar traits with a renewed resolve.

  I removed my shirt and reached for a tank top to sleep in when two gentle, warm arms wrapped around and embraced my naked torso. I hadn’t even heard him come up behind me, which was an odd sensation for a vampire. I normally heard every movement and anticipated every action before it happened. My thoughts must have been so terribly occupied that I had not paid attention.

  What a strange idea. A human had taken me by surprise. I didn’t think on this long because he began kissing my shoulder and the nape of my neck very gently. I gasped at the sensation as he worked his way up to my earlobe, and the passion within me began to blaze again for him. The tiny hairs on my skin shivered and stood at attention.

  “I was thinking, Anna,” he whispered into my ear, “that we don’t know what might happen tomorrow. One or both of us might not make it out of that prison alive.”

  He kissed on my neck a little more and breathed gently on my ear.

  “That is not a prophecy, is it?”

  “No, I was just thinking I can think of nothing better than to spend my last day on earth wrapped up in bed with you.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I turned to him and kissed his exhilarated face with all of the passion I had been repressing, and his body responded right away as we fell into bed together. We were a tangle of limbs and bodies. I held him and he moved with me in a way that was purely ours. It was for us and only us. I could never feel this way with anyone else.

  What was it about danger that made everything so much more inviting and sexy? It was as if it added exhilaration to even the most mundane of feelings. And those feelings that were not so mundane were skyrocketed to euphoria.

  It was a wonderful day, and I decided I could die happy if it came to that. I remembered falling asleep thinking that kindred spirits were real, even when the spirits were as different as we.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Grant

  We left the rest of them hidden in their respective vehicles as we approached the entrance to the Saint Lawrence Correctional Facility the next day. Despite the danger we were about to face, I felt blissful and almost eager to get inside. I chalked that up to a mixture of adrenaline and the afterglow of the incredible time I had spent with Anna the night before. I turned to look at her face for traces of the same glow, but all I got was a half-smile when she noticed me looking. Otherwise, she looked stoic and focused. That’s probably how I should be acting instead of getting distracted over my own emotions.

  Luckily, the guards seemed to read my antsy demeanor as that of an anxious visitor on his first trip to a prison. Anna was obviously my reluctantly supportive girlfriend or wife who showed her support by quietly being by my side but disapproving of the whole thing. It worked for us.

  The guards escorted us and a few other late visitors down the main hallway where we could view several long rows of barred cells. At first, I thought all of the prisoners were out in the yard or somewhere else in the prison because the only noise we heard was the rhythmic tapping of our own shoes on the cement floor.

  Then I noticed faces peering out from behind the bars as they quietly observed us passing through their halls. Their faces were gaunt and terrified, and the looks in their eyes sent cold shivers down my spine. Even a monastery full of monks who had pledged a vow of silence would have been noisier than this. The additional knowledge that there were people in those cells watching us made the silence palpable and thick feeling.

  I looked at Anna to see if she’d noticed them too. She had noticed them, and I felt the muscles in her back tense. She had once been the reason for the same look on prisoners’ faces, and it ate away at her noticeably. However, if you didn’t know Anna the way I did, you would never know it by looking at her. She looked so light and delicately graceful in the little sundress covered in pastel swatches, so very unlike my Anna. This Anna looked like an Easter egg basket with sunglasses skipping her way silently down the hall.

  As we neared the end of the hall, we noticed two ominous-looking double doors positioned where the hall seemed to dead end. Even though the guards steered us sharply to the right and through a different set of doors, Anna stopped abruptly and tensed all over as she stared at the dead-end doors. She inhaled slowly and lowered her sunglasses, which no one seemed to notice she was still wearing indoors, to the bridge of her nose in order to glare at the doors. I was holding her hand, so I had to stop too, which caught the attention of the guard nearest to us.

  “Let’s keep moving, miss. The visitor’s center is this way,” stated the surly guard by our side.

  Anna didn’t move at first.

  “What’s through there, officer?” she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment curiously and then at the dead-end doors. I was afraid the guard might sense Anna’s otherness for a moment since he so obviously worked in a prison that held vampires. However, he just regarded Anna as an annoying but pretty girl with too many questions.

  “It leads to the kitchen, miss. That’s all. Not part of the tour for civilians though, so we had better keep moving.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said nonchalantly and shrugged before pressing on with the group through the other doors and to the visitor’s center. She swung my arm back and forth with the carefree attitude of the newly in love, which in a way, I guess we were.

  As soon as the guard was out of earshot, I asked as low as I could manage, “Is that where they are?”

  She nodded only slightly as we entered the brightly lit lobby of the visitor’s center with its cheerful murals painted of skies of blue and white fluffy clouds and cartoon characters. I assumed this was for the benefit of any children that might be visiting their relatives in such a scary place. We signed in and sat at our assigned table to wait for Leroy McCoy to arrive.

  Leroy McCoy was a five-time loser I’d found who had no family, virtually no friends and was currently doing a long stint for armed robbery and resisting arrest. When he came around the corner, he looked a million years older than the mug shots I had seen online. I squinted at the man’s face, but it was him all right. The pictures I had found were of a tough and angry white man with tanned skin and scraggly hair that fell in his face trying to cover his cold, grey eyes. He had rough, deep lines all over his face that gave him the appearance of a human topography map. The man that walked in was a paler version with a short buzz cut and a greatly minimized physique that displayed a number of homemade jail tattoos.

  His eyes darted around wildly with a look of sheer terror. The guard escorted him to us and sat him down on the other side of the table. All around us, other prisoners who matched Leroy in both haircut and demeanor were sitting down at tables with their loved ones and whispering relieved greetings. Leroy just stared at us wide-eyed and confused.

  “Mr. McCoy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Leroy McCoy,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” he replied again, seeming unsure.

  “I’m afraid we made a mistake,” I said, trying to sound disappointed like we had practiced.

  “What do you mean?” He was beginning to sound upset.

  “I’m afraid that we have the wrong Leroy McCoy. You see, my wife and I are looking for the Leroy McCoy who killed our father in a bar fight, and I’m afraid that you are just not that man. We wanted to confront him, you see. Get some closure. Sorry to trouble you. We got the wrong guy.”

  “The wrong guy?” He didn’t seem to understand.

  “Yes,” I said. “Sorry for the trouble.”

  We started to stand, but he grabbed my hand quickly, and I was compelled
to sit back down so as to not draw attention from the guards.

  “Is this a test?” he asked earnestly. He was petrified.

  “A test? No. No, we just made a mistake.”

  “If it is a test, I’ll react however you want. I can take the blame for the other Leroy if closure is what you want. No problem. I’ll be good. I’ll cooperate.”

  He said all of this with a look of panic and desperation in his eyes, and I looked disbelieving at the man who used to look so defiant and angry now reduced to blind subordination. I had seen Leroy’s rap sheet, and the terms “lack of respect for authority” and “lack of regret for his crimes” had come up a lot.

  Just then, Anna took his hand gently, lowered her glasses and looked into his eyes. He started at the intensity of hers.

  “No test here, Leroy. Just a mistake, friend. Although, if you hear some sirens in the near future, I would run and hide as fast as you can. You’ll be okay if you just hide.”

  He gaped at her. I did too. I thought surely this man would freak out now and run off to tell the guards what she had told him in order to prove what a good little prisoner he was, but he didn’t. He just sat there very calm and still. Something about Anna made him keep quiet. I don’t know if he recognized her as someone who was trying to help, or if he was just too terrified to react. Either way worked for me, because he nodded and kept silently calm as we rose and exited the visitor’s center after logging out with the front desk. The warning was a last-minute addition to the plan. But I could see how Anna wanted at least one prisoner in the hopes that the message would spread to run and hide and stay out of the way. Once the killing began, the blood lust might take over some of the vampires, and it would be difficult not to get confused about who was innocent or enemy. They had all fed the night before in their own ways, but I hoped for Leroy McCoy’s sake that Anna’s warning hit home.

  My heart began to beat faster as we neared the front entrance with an escort guard hot on our heels. Anna’s hand squeezed mine, probably because she could hear my pulse race and feel my blood pumping faster. Calm was what she was trying to convey to me. I needed to calm myself.