“So, on that note, I’m gonna give you two love birds some time alone,” Selena smiled. She held out her hand and Devlin placed a wooden stake in it. “This will go one of three ways. Either she’ll get so hungry that she’ll eat you, or you won’t wait for her to get to that stage and you’ll stake her. Option three is that you tell me where the carrier of the magic blood is. I let her go, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll do you the honor of turning you myself,” she leaned closer to him, showing her fangs. If she sunk her teeth in it was all over, but Jerry couldn’t show even the slightest reaction to make her think that.
“Gee, let me think. Death, or eternity as a disgusting bloodsucking dick monkey like you...I think I’ll pass, thanks,” Jerry hissed.
“Disgusting? I heard you banged her?”
“She ain’t a monster anymore!”
“Keep telling yourself that. Keep pretending that there is something good inside her.”
“She’s better than you could ever be. So shove it up your ass, you petulant soulless bitch!”
“Suit yourself. You might be a little more agreeable once she starts looking at you like a one-hundred and eighty pound Sirloin though,” she said, and tossed the stake into Cassandra’s cage. A hellish grin was plastered all over her face, “you kids play nice now.”
She turned and left the cage. The door slammed shut and they heard the lock bolt shut.
Jerry immediately turned and walked over to Cass. “Jesus, you look like hell!”
“Kiss my ass,” she spat.
He ignored that, “I know where we are.”
“Shh!” She turned her head, listening out to see if Black Forest were still outside the door. “They’re gone.”
Jerry quickly scanned the cage. That’s all it really was. There were no doors and only one window, which had heavy metal bars over it. A few scraps of torn paper, lots of dust and some nails lay on the floor.
Jerry dropped to his knees and leaned backwards so that he could pick up one of the nails. He managed to get it between his fingers, then stood back up and started fiddling with the lock on his cuffs. A few seconds later there was a click and his hands were free.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding about that,” Cass said, looking surprised.
“Let me get a look at yours,” he said turned her around. As he did his hand brushed her skin. It was like icy water. “Jesus, you’re freezing!”
“That’s because I’m dying you moron!”
“Look who gets cranky if they don’t get their breakfast,” he said, spotting the padlock holding the chains together. There was no key hole, only numbers. “Shit! It’s a combination lock, there’s nothing to pick!”
“Terrific,” she snorted.
“We gotta find a way outta here and contact Sophinia, so she can send the cavalry,” Jerry said.
“Well sorry, I think I left my giant bat signal at home,” she said, angry sarcasm dripping from her voice. She really was in a bad mood when she was hungry.
“Not helping!”
“Well, what do you want me to do? Head butt my way through a few inches of steel?!” she snarled.
“Well, that would certainly earn you a cookie!” he spat back. “Look, let’s just brainstorm this for a second and figure something out.”
Jerry paced the room in silence for a second, while Cass stood there thinking with her eyes closed.
“Okay, I got nothing,” he said, trying to hide the despair in his voice.
Cass stayed quiet for a few more moments before opening her eyes again.
“I got a plan,” she said quietly. Jerry was all ears. “You pick up the stake and stab me in the heart with it.”
“And use your combustion to melt through the door, Cass, that’s brilliant! But with one slight drawback; you would be dead!” he said, not even considering it for a second.
“I’d rather go quick than starve,” she admitted.
“It’s not an option.”
“Yes, it is! She was right Jerry...when a vampire gets hungry enough, they’ll eat anyone or anything they can find...I don’t want to hurt you,” she was scared. She was actually scared.
It didn’t seem possible. Cass was a badass, through and through, nothing scared her. Even when she was talking about all that hell stuff, she seemed like she was ready to meet it with her chin held high.
“If they find out about you, they’ll kill everyone that you care about. They’ll lock you in a hole, stick tubes into your body and suck out every last drop. You stake me, they’ll let you out of here and that is your best chance,” her eyes were getting wet. “Please...you have to...”
“Martyrdom doesn’t suit you Cass,” Jerry said, starting to look very worried about her. He picked up the stake just in case she tried to use it on herself, or something. Not that she could, being chained the way she was.
“It doesn’t suit anybody, but it’s your only option,” tears rolled down her cheeks. “You know why all those books and movies put a tasty spin on us...make us seem romantic, make us seem powerful?”
He didn’t bother asking why because he knew she was going to give him the hard, brutal, unrelenting answer.
“It’s because they are so desperate for an excuse for their own behavior,” she laughed at the sick joke. “You make us into something amazing. Something beautiful. But all we are is freaks...murderous leeches. We can’t carry on without sucking the life blood out of other things, and for some reason we think we’re special. I am four hundred years old and I never earned a second of it!”
Jerry was trying desperately hard to brush off her words, but they did hold a certain truth. “You saved me. You saved my friends. Cass, hold on to yourself!” Jerry said, but his words had no effect.
“I saved you because I was paid to! But when I got close, when I saw what you were, I killed them because I wanted to be able to drain you myself! I wasn’t saving your life...I was saving you for dessert!”
“I don’t believe that. You’re not a monster!”
“Jerry!” she laughed bitterly. “Becoming a vampire doesn’t turn you into a monster. It just brings out the monstrous side that was already there, and it makes you think that you’re unstoppable. You really think I ever believed that I would live happily ever after? Name me one real person that has...name me one vampire that has, name me one person that immortality is true for, other than God himself.”
“God is a myth!” Jerry shouted.
“Well, whether he is or not, you still have to stake me! I believe he’s real, and if he is, he probably won’t like me, but that doesn’t change anything...now finish it!”
“You can’t ask me to do this,” he breathed, looking furious. It must have been the blood loss making her act this way because her strength seemed to have disappeared completely. She wasn’t just physically weak, she was losing it mentally.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry...I’m sorry I ever came into your life.”
“Cass,” he tried, but a great gaping hole seemed to open up inside his stomach.
“Do it! Please! Just make it end!”
Jerry’s heart was beating like piston inside his chest. Sweat was falling from his forehead and his hand was shaking from holding the stake so tightly. Fear and anger had taken over his entire body and they weren’t letting go.
And then his mouth opened and words slipped out. “Okay...”
She looked at him with nothing but gratitude in her tear filled eyes. She raised her chin up and move her head back giving him a clear shot to her chest through a gap in the chains.
Jerry raised the stake up in the air and without hesitation brought it down. But it never hit her.
“Here’s my alternative!” he growled.
She looked up to see that he had stabbed himself in the arm and that blood was running from the wound. Her eyes went wide with panic as she realized what he was about to do.
“No! Jerry, don’t!”
But it was too late. He grabbed the back of her head and shove
d her mouth against the bloody gash just below his elbow. “You hulk out, break through the door and get us the hell outta here!”
As soon as it touched her lips it was too late. The overwhelming taste of life had infected her. She let the blood run into her mouth and down her throat. Like an electric shock, she felt power surge throughout her body and locked her teeth around his arm. She pulled more and more and a warm burning sensation of ecstasy completely overtook her. It didn’t last long though.
Something else began to seep in. Pure, unrestrained fury burned inside her veins.
“That’s enough! Cass, that’s enough!” Jerry yelled in pain and tried to pry his arm away from her, but she was biting down too hard.
He thought fast, and quickly brought the stake down into her shoulder. The tiny sting it gave her caused her to stop feeding and Jerry fell backwards against the wall, blood seeping from his arm.
Cass snarled like a seriously pissed off lion. She tensed her body up and moved her arms out, snapping the chains from around her like rubber bands, causing the broken links to fly across the room. Her eyes immediately locked on Jerry’s.
She bared her fangs and advanced on him. She wanted more.
“Wait! Wait Cass, stop!” Jerry tried, but she grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off of the ground as if he weighed nothing more than an empty glass. “Cass don’t! Please! I’m your friend!”
She paused, just as her teeth were about to come down on his neck. She moved and looked him in the eye for a second. Her eyes were glowing red like hungry neon lights.
“Help me...please!” Jerry gasped under her grip.
WHAM!
In a heartbeat she had dropped him and spun kicked the door straight off of its hinges. The giant metal plate shot across the factory floor and collided with a busted machine like a cannonball. The smash echoed out across the entire factory.
She marched out, just as a pair of Black Forest goons rushed in to see what was happening. They took one look at her burning eyes and freaked. She had hold of one of them before he could even turn to run. He screamed in agony as she ripped his arm right out of his shoulder causing blood to spray across the floor.
Jerry shuffled out of the cage, just in time to see Cassandra crush the vampire’s skull like a grapefruit. He burst into sparks. The other vampire tried to run, but Cassandra was a hundred times faster now. She grabbed hold of him before he could make it more than a few feet. Jerry’s eyes went wide in horror as she suddenly brought her fangs down on the vampire’s throat and began to drain him.
She was drinking from vampires?!
She ripped her mouth away from his neck and flung his body away like an empty coke can. She sniffed the air for a second, then started marching away towards the rooms that Jerry had passed on his way to her cage. Less than thirty seconds later there was a great crash and more screaming rang out.
Cass was going postal!
Jerry tried to think. He rushed over to the dead vampire that she’d drained. For some reason, that one hadn’t burned into a pile of ash, probably because he didn’t have any blood left in him. He quickly searched its pockets and found its cell phone. With his hands still shaking he started dialing.
“Hello?” Joe’s voice said after one ring.
“Joe! It’s me!”
“Thank God! Jerry, where are you?!” Joe’s voice was so frantic that it was almost difficult to understand.
“Rockville Iron Plant! Selena and Black Forest are here! Send everyone!”
“We’re on our way. Stay hidden.”
“Wait, Joe. Something’s wrong with Cass. I fed her some of my blood so we could bust out and now she’s gone psycho T-1000! She’s drinking vampire blood!”
“She’s what?!”
“Just get here quick!” he said, and hung up.
Thinking about Cass’s current condition made him realized that he was still bleeding from the wound just below his elbow. He ripped one of the sleeves of his shirt off and wrapped it around the slash, tying it with his mouth.
He ran over to where most of the war zone sounds were coming from. As he approached, a broken and bloodied vampire suddenly flew into the wall right in front of him, before flopping to the floor. Cassandra was cleaning house.
The vamp on the floor started to stir. Jerry frantically searched the area with his eyes for a weapon, which he found on the adjacent wall. A fire axe inside its case.
He smashed the glass with his elbow and pulled out the axe. Just as the vampire was starting to get to its feet, Jerry brought the blade down on top of its neck. He took its head off in one hit and it burst into flames.
Suddenly, the battle noises started to come closer and another body flew out in front of him, but this one was combusting as it traveled. When it hit the wall, nothing but a few chard bones and ash fell to the floor. It was directly followed by a huge rusted piece of machinery that blasted out half the wall as it broke through and burst into different pieces, like a tank hit by a bomb.
Cass stepped back into the corridor, looking like a blood burning red-eyed version of the Incredible Hulk throwing a serious tantrum. She was quite literally begging for something to kill. She was rabid, on the verge of being as mindless as a werewolf on their first full moon. All she wanted was death and pain.
His blood had driven her insane.
This was a side effect that nobody had ever predicted, but then Cass was the only living vampire to ever drink from him twice. Parker had told them that too much blood would be fatal to a vamp, but drinking twice after going cold turkey from humans whilst starving...that was an x-factor that nobody had even thought about.
Her eyes found him again, along with his bandaged arm. Her mouth opened wide as if she were trying to drink in the fumes from thirty feet away. Then she snapped back around as another person entered the corridor.
Selena was there, wings agape and snarling at Cass.
Her fake innocent features had vanished and had been replaced by the bloodthirsty demon that hid beneath. She wasn’t backing down.
But her initial instinctual thought to attack was shadowed as soon as she saw Cassandra’s eyes and hulking strength. She turned and stared straight at Jerry, focusing on his bandaged arm.
“You!” she breathed. “It was you the whole time!”
“Yahtzee, bitch!” Jerry yelled.
She went at him with everything she had. The corridor was just wide enough for her to extend her fifteen foot wings and swoop instead of run. She went for Jerry, but Cass was the one she met.
The impact was a heavy, flat pound, followed by the sounds that you’d normally only hear from dogs. Before anything else could ignite this meeting, Cassandra pounced on Selena.
“Shit!” Jerry blurted and rolled out of the way as the two of them came flying past him, smashing into an old machine on the factory floor.
Cass laid a massive right hook into Selena, which rattled several teeth out of her mouth. A hit like that would have liquefied anyone else, but Selena was a pureblood. She could take it. She spat blood and broken teeth from her mouth and they re-grew instantly. Cass went for another hit, but Selena dodged and slammed her in the stomach. She span and smacked her with one of her wings, causing her to fly across the workshop and impact the ground. She was up in an instant, snarling like a wild animal.
They charged at each other, and suddenly Jerry couldn’t keep up with the fight anymore. They were moving far too quickly for his eyes to register. A blur of punches, kicks and growls followed, as the two of them grappled across the floor.
Jerry took the opportunity to scramble out of there and get to cover. He wanted to help Cass, but it wasn’t that simple. She’d probably kill him if he tried to get involved in the battle.
The entire factory shook as the two vicious creatures slammed into the wall. The sounds of metal bending and breaking echoed out across the floor and rusty girders started falling from the roof. One of them landed right in front of Cass as she was advancing on Selena again, caus
ing them to temporarily back off.
When they stopped, Jerry could see that they were both covered in blood and quickly healing wounds. Those two were going to tear each other apart. They lunged at each other again, this time they both tried to land their fangs in the other.
If his blood made Cass as powerful as a pureblood, what would happen if a pureblood drank it? What would it turn them into? Some kind of vampire demigod?
Suddenly, another huge crash erupted around the floor, but this one wasn’t caused by Cass and Selena. It had come from behind Jerry. He turned, just in time to see Sophinia breaking through the wall and landing perfectly with her wings outstretched. Claire, Larz and the rest of her vampire entourage were right behind her.
Blood Heavy (Blood Heavy Series) Page 25