Pitch

by Jillian Eaton

  “Aren’t you going to scream?” Her lips pushed out in a childish pout. “The other one screamed. You’re no fun. I want a new toy.”

  That did it. The pain in my arm had dulled, replaced with anger that burned at a fever pitch. I slapped her hand away from my face and scrambled to my feet. She let me get up, renewed interest glimmering in her icy blue eyes.

  “I am not some toy,” I told her fiercely. “I’m a human being! And you can’t go around killing people. The cops are going to be here soon and -”

  “Oh, cops shmops.” She waved her hand dismissively. “We took care of them ages ago.”

  I remembered the laughter I heard on the other end of the 9-1-1 call and shuddered. “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

  “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?” she repeated in a high pitched parody of my own voice. “Always the same, inane questions. Stupid humans,” she said as she began to circle around me. “So content in your little bubbles. Well I am sorry to say that your bubble has just been,” she snapped her fingers, “popped.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “My name?” she said, looking surprised by the question. “Angelique. What’s yours?”

  “Lola.”

  Her head tipped to the side as she mused it over. “Lola… I like that. It suits you, I think. You’re feisty. So different from all the others. All they do is beg and cry and beg and cry.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you can imagine it gets pretty annoying after a while. But you… you, my darling Lola, haven’t begged once. Do you want to be my pet?” Her face lit up. “Oh, please say yes! Please. We’ll have so much fun together! I haven’t had my own pet for years and years.”

  What I wanted was for this crazy nightmare to end. I wanted to wake up safe in a hospital bed, the victim of an electric shock from being stupid enough to try to hot wire a car. I wanted Travis and my father to be there. I wanted to never know what it felt like to bludgeon someone over the head with a horse shoe. I wanted to forget Angelique had ever existed. “Sure,” I said, feigning a bright smile. “I’ll be your pet. What do I have to do?”

  Angelique clapped her hands together, giddy as a child with a new toy. “This is going to be so much fun. And Mona is going to so jealous. Just wait until she sees you! Of course we’ll have to get you out of those clothes and do something with your hair. Dye it blonde, maybe. Is the color natural?”

  I lifted a strand of my waist length black hair and nodded.

  Her fangs flashed as she grinned. “Excellent. Now I just have to -”

  “ANGELIQUE!” A man’s roar ripped through the night and Angelique’s entire body went rigid.

  “Oh drats,” she breathed. “He found me and I’m not even in the right sector. He is going to be so angry with me.”

  “Who is going to be angry with you?” And how many of you are there?

  Her lips pursed. “My maker, duh. Promise you won’t go anywhere? I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  “I – uh – no. No I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay right here next to the dead woman.”

  “Is she dead?” Angelique’s gaze cut across to the body that was still crumpled beside the pool. “That’s too bad. She didn’t last very long, did she? Not that any of that matters now that I’ve got my own pet.”

  “That’s me,” I said, somehow managing a weak smile.

  Angelique leaned in close and very carefully, very gently, kissed my cheek. “Now don’t you go anywhere because then I’d have to find you and torture you and that wouldn’t be any fun at all. For you, at least.” She winked.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied.

  Faster than my eyes could follow she disappeared into the house. I stood frozen for half a second, a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car, before my brain kicked into high gear and I fled, leaping over the wooden fence that separated this backyard from the next like some sort of world class hurdler.

  I wasn’t that far from my apartment. A couple of blocks, four at the most. It was difficult to gauge distance when everything was so dark. I reached for my cell phone without breaking stride and looked at the time. 9:32PM. Had it really only been an hour since Travis and I had met beside the dumpster?

  Travis. What had happened to him? Was he still in Mr. Livingston’s house? Where was Mr. Livingston? Because that man who opened the door sure as hell wasn’t him.

  I ran behind house after house. A dull ache was growing in my left side, reminding me I hadn’t done this much physical activity in ages. I tried not to think about what it would mean if I got home and my dad wasn’t there. What it would mean if no one was there.

  My foot hooked on something. A hose, left out to water the lawn. I went flying through the air, arms outstretched, hair lifted away from my face, completely weightless… and then the ground was rushing up too fast and I landed hard on my right side, hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. Like a little boiled shrimp I curled into the fetal position and whimpered into the grass, using it to muffle my sob of pain.

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. The panic threatened to overwhelm me and I battled it back, knowing if I let it consume me now I would turn into one of those crying, mindless idiots Angelique had talked about. I tried to concentrate on taking one deep breath. Just one, good, full breath to fill up my body and extinguish the awful feeling of drowning out of water.

  When air finally filled my lungs it hurt, more than I had anticipated. I clenched my teeth against the pain and staggered to my feet. I had to keep going. I had to run. The thought of what would happen if Angelique caught me was the jump start I needed. I didn’t want to end up like the woman drenched in her own blood.

  A gap opened between the side by side houses. A short stretch of cracked pavement that gave way to an overgrown field. I had finally reached the West side of town. The familiar surroundings were a small comfort. I considered cutting through the woods to get to the apartment complex, then cast the idea aside. If monsters like Angelique had invaded the houses, I did not want to know what lurked in the forest.

  I turned right and stumbled up over the sidewalk. The moon had peeked out behind the clouds again, lighting the way. I urged my legs to go faster, then faster still, until I was in an all out sprint.

  The boy who appeared suddenly in front of me never had a chance.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I Meet a Boy With a Gun

  We collided with the force of two freight trains coming together and went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I saw dark blue eyes, tanned skin, and hair as black as my mine before we pulled apart, both breathing heavily.

  In a move too quick for me to anticipate the boy had my arms pinned behind my back and I was shoved up against the side of an abandoned warehouse. My chin bounced painfully off the rusted metal siding and I tried to pull free, but the boy was too strong. He held me easily, as an adult would hold a writhing child, even though he looked to be no older than seventeen or eighteen.

  “What are you doing out here?” he demanded, his mouth so close to my ear that I jumped.

  “What are you doing out here?” I countered. Oh, God. What if he was one of Them? Like Angelique and the man who had taken Travis. I had been lucky to escape twice; I wasn’t so hopeful about a third time. And I had been so close to home. Another block and I would have made it. Today was really, REALLY not my day. In fact, I was pretty sure this day would go down in history as one of the suckiest days ever. For everyone.

  The boy squeezed my wrists a little tighter. “Don’t you know what’s happening?” he said. “Don’t you know what’s out there?”

  “Well, no,” I admitted, trying not to wince. “Not really. Do you?”

  “You’re bleeding,” said the boy. He sounded shocked. “How did you get this far if you’re bleeding?”

  I glanced down. So I was. I must have cut myself when I tripped over the hose. Right above my right knee my jeans were torn to shreds and blood
had stained the dark blue denim an inky red. The cut looked pretty deep. I flexed my leg and wondered why I couldn’t feel anything. “I fell. I was running away from one of those… those things and I fell.”

  The boy released me and stepped away, giving me some room to breathe. Rubbing my arms I turned to face him. He stared back at me, his face an expressionless mask.

  His hair was long and a little unruly. Not black, as I first thought, but a deep, dark mahogany brown. His eyes were the clear blue of a deep lake. I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking, or why he looked seriously pissed off. You would think he would be happy to find another human alive. Unless…

  “Show me your teeth,” I said in my best tough girl voice. “So I can make sure you’re not one of Them.”

  One eyebrow shot up. “You go first,” he said.

  I peeled my lips away from my gums, revealing teeth that even braces had never managed to make completely straight. “Nuh slivah,” I said.

  “What?”

  “No silver,” I repeated sheepishly.

  He cocked his head to the side as if he had heard something. I saw his body tense and his hand went to his hip. My eyes widened.

  “Is that a gun?” I asked in a hushed tone.

  “This,” he said as he pulled the black revolver free from its holster and cocked it, “is a double action forty four mag.”

  “It looks kind of small,” I said doubtfully.

  The boy shrugged. “It shoots bullets. That’s all I care about.”

  I wasn’t completely convinced. If one of those things tried to attack me again I wanted something big to defend myself with. Something huge. Like a bazooka. Still, a small gun was better than no gun. Especially if it was standing between me and crazy Angelique.

  I grabbed the boy’s arm. Even through the black leather jacket he wore I could feel the rigid tautness of his muscles. My fingers dug in, harder than I had intended. He didn’t so much as flinch, just stared at me silently out of those piercing blue eyes. “You have to help me,” I said desperately. “I live right over there, at the High Garden Apartments and my dad -”

  “We can’t talk out here,” he interrupted. “It isn’t safe. Follow me.”

  He took off across the street and I had to run to catch up. I followed him into a narrow alley that smelled like garbage. I tripped more than once, not yet accustomed to traveling in the dark, and with a muffled curse he took my wrist and ordered me to keep up or get lost.

  We went up one alley and down another, then up again until I was so disoriented I didn’t know if we were even on the West side anymore. Finally he stopped in front of a nondescript gray door and kicked it in with one well placed strike of his boot.

  The room beyond the door was small and cramped and smelled like urine. I shuffled in and stood against one wall, my hand covering my nose, while the boy locked the door behind us and shoved something in front if it. I couldn’t see what it was. I couldn’t see anything. The room was pitch black. I should have been terrified, but I felt oddly… safe.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “An abandoned storage unit.” There was a click, and then a blinding light. I squinted and covered my eyes.

  “Get that out of my face!”

  He lowered the flashlight and pointed it at the floor, illuminating the space between us in a soft yellow glow and casting his face into shadow. There was a gray metal desk next to me, the kind you would find in any office building. I hopped up on it. My feet accidentally struck the side and made a loud clanging sound. I cringed. The boy reacted a bit more violently.

  “Shut the hell up,” he hissed, shining the flashlight in my eyes again. “Do you want to draw them here?”

  “No,” I said shortly. And then, because I wasn’t exactly in the best mood, “You’re a real jack ass, you know that? This hasn’t been easy for me either and you’re not exactly making it any easier.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Let me look at your knee.”

  Before I could say otherwise he was kneeling in front of me and slowly rolling up my pant leg. His fingers brushed against my bare skin and all I could think was, thank God I shaved this morning.

  One hand cupped my calf while the other slowly probed around the edges of the wound. I heard a quiet intake of breath before he rocked back on his heels and glared up at me. “This is deep,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “How are you still walking?”

  I straightened my knee and bent towards it, studying the bloody scrape and the bits of grass and dirt that clung to the open wound. It was pretty nasty looking. I glanced at the boy. Under his tan he suddenly looked pale and sweat gleamed high on his forehead. “You’re not going to faint or anything are you?” I asked. “Does blood gross you out? It grosses my friend Travis out. He can’t stand it.”

  He shot me a look. “Blood does not gross me out.”

  “Okay,” I said skeptically. “Then why do you look so -”

  “Did one of them bite you?”

  “What – I don’t – that is I – what are you talking about?” How did he know that? How did he know Angelique had sunk her fangs into my hand like some kind of vam-no. My mind shied away from the word. I wasn’t ready to use it to explain what was happening. Not yet.

  The boy pulled me to my feet and ordered me to turn around.

  I stared at him like he had two heads. “You can’t talk to me like that. Who do you think you are?”

  His reply was to simply grab my waist and spin me until I was facing the desk. Caught off balance, I braced both hands against the top of it. A startled shriek pushed past my lips when he began to pat me down, cop style.

  “What are you – how dare – I’m going to -”

  “Shut up.” His fingers swept down my right arm and pressed over the top of my hand, right where I had been bitten. He froze for half a second, then grabbed the flashlight he had set on the edge of the desk and shined it directly over the bite marks. I looked as well, something I had managed to avoid until now.

  I half expected to see my hand oozing puss and blood. I mean, human’s mouths hold some of the dirtiest bacteria on the planet. If I hadn’t been running for my life I would have headed for the nearest doctor’s office ASAP.

  My hand didn’t hurt anymore; had not hurt for quite a while. Still, I was not prepared for what I saw. Instead of gooey grossness my hand looked perfectly normal. The only thing different about it was the two white scars evenly spaced between my pointer finger and my thumb. Two white scars shaped like half moons exactly where Angelique had chewed on me like I was some kind of bone.

  “You were bitten,” the boy accused. He dropped my hand and backed away as if he had just discovered I had some kind of deadly contagious disease. A feeling of unease turned my stomach.

  “Yeah? So? What does it mean?” I said, cradling my arm defensively against my chest. I hadn’t exactly asked to be bitten, yet the boy was acting as if it were my fault.

  “What does it mean?” His laughter echoed through the room, flat and humorless. “It means you’re screwed.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maximus

  Well that didn’t sound very promising.

  I stared at my hand. Poked at the scars. Wiggled my fingers. Everything felt fine. Everything felt normal. Wasn’t that a good thing? I braced my arms behind me and looked across the room to where the boy was standing, his eyes pinned on my hand.

  “What do you mean I’m screwed? And who are you, anyways?” I asked suspiciously. Belatedly I realized I didn’t know anything about him. Who he was. Where he had come from. What his name was. All questions I probably should have gotten answered before I allowed myself to be locked in some forgotten storage unit with him. I seriously needed to work on my self preservation skills.

  “Let me see the bite mark again,” he said, holding out his arm.

  I snorted. “No way, pal. Not until you start talking. Do you know what’s going on? Do you know what th
ose things are out there?”

  “What do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  He shrugged.

  “You’re kind of really annoying, you know that right?”

  He smiled thinly.

  “Okay… Umm… Some kind of cult on a rampage?”

  “No.”

  “An inbred family of axe murderers?”

  His lips twitched. “No.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it. They’re a group of murderous vampires bent on destroying the human race.”

  “And we have a winner,” he said softly.

  “We have a – wait, no. I wasn’t being serious.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, you know what sarcasm is, don’t you?”

  He leveled those deep blue, unreadable eyes at me and said, “Do you?”

  “I invented sarcasm,” I retorted.

  “Then you must know I am not being sarcastic, not even a little bit, when I say your third guess was pretty spot on.”

  I actually believed him. For all of two seconds. Then the absurdity of what he was saying sank in and I began to snicker. I mean, vampires? A cult, that was easy to believe. Even axe murderers or Satan worshippers or some military experiment gone wrong. But vampires? As in burn in the sun, sleep in coffins, drink your blood vampires? Did he think I was an idiot?

  “Is this some sort of… reality show or something?” I gasped out between giggles. “V-v-vampires. You have got to be kidding me!” The laughter roared out of me until I was doubled over with my legs crossed in an effort not to embarrass myself beyond redemption. I didn’t want to be that girl. The one who peed her pants on TV.

  “I am glad you find all of this so amusing,” the boy said stiffly.

  “Oh come on,” I scoffed. “You don’t really expect me to believe you, do you? I’m not that gullible. You should have done this whole bit on Travis. Is he in on this? That brat, I bet he is!” Grinning, I scanned each corner of the storage unit, looking for any tell tale red lights that would reveal hidden cameras. I didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean anything. They were probably in the walls themselves, or in the miscellaneous office furniture that was scattered about. Spying a chair that looked suspiciously out of place I grabbed the back of it and rolled it into the light. Crouching down, I began to run my fingers under the seat, feeling for wires.