Between a Vamp and a Hard Place

by Jessica Sims

  “I invite you to join me inside this doorway,” I told him.

  As if an invisible barrier had dropped, Rand entered. We’d gone through this scenario over and over again, to the point that I wondered how anyone was possibly afraid of a vampire, when all they had to do was shut a door in their face. But as I headed back to the second door, the one to the overcrowded, box-filled apartment that belonged to Gemma and me for three more weeks, I thought of Rand’s glowing eyes, his hypnotic commands. His imperious expectation of being obeyed.

  The way that one vampire had carelessly tried to tear my throat out.

  Oh, Gemma.

  Stop it, Lindsey, I told myself. My fingers shook hard as I put the big iron key in the lock and turned it. The door pushed open slowly, creaking. The apartment was dark.

  I swallowed hard, not yet stepping across the entryway. “Gemma?”

  No response. It was just after midnight; maybe she was asleep. I fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on.

  The apartment was trashed.

  I sucked in a breath as I surveyed the damage. Torn boxes were scattered along the marble tiles, and shattered dishes covered the floor. One red bowl I remembered Gemma lovingly packing now sparkled in a hundred pieces at my feet.

  My stomach gave a sick lurch. “Gemma,” I bellowed, pushing forward. “Gemma, are you here?”

  “Lindsey,” Rand hissed behind me. “Don’t go in alone! Call me in to enter! I cannot follow unless invited!”

  “Right! Whatever! Come in already!” I cried, even as I rushed down the narrow hall in search of my missing friend. “Gemma! Answer me!”

  A heavier body grabbed me from behind and threw me against one of the plaster walls. It was Rand, his eyes flashing that eerie green instead of the normal blue. “Lindsey,” he whispered. “If there is someone still here, you must let me go first so I can protect you.”

  “But—” I began.

  His gaze on mine, he reached for his belt and brandished a knife a moment later.

  “Can I have one?” I said at the sight of it.

  “Take this one,” he told me. “I have another. And stay behind me.”

  I nodded, grasping the hilt. My heart pounded. I prayed I wouldn’t have to use it, but at least I had some sort of weapon.

  And garlic blood, I reminded myself. If anyone took a bite out of me again, they were going to get a surprise. It might mean I would die, too, but at least I’d go down swinging.

  Hopefully.

  Rand stalked forward into the crowded apartment, pulling his other blade from his belt. He stopped and scented the air. “Two strangers and Gemma.”

  “Still here?” I asked, feeling a little panicky.

  He gave a soft shake of his head. “Scents are old, but they could be false.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask how one made a scent false, when Rand disappeared into one of the rooms. I peeked in behind him. Equally trashed, days of hard work down the drain. Whoever had come in looking for Gemma—or me, or Rand, my brain whispered—had wanted to make a statement.

  “No one in this room,” Rand said, then shut the door behind him. “We’ll eliminate all possibilities first, just in case someone is hiding.”

  I swallowed hard and stuck close to his back. “You could tell by scenting the room?”

  “No scents, no sounds, no taste.”

  “Taste?” I asked.

  “Vampires leave a taste of old blood on the mouth, like a trail,” he explained, heading for the next door. “It’s like a stain of their last victim soaking the air. I can feel it on my tongue.”

  Wow, that sounded . . . gross. I supposed it was handy if it helped him find other vampires, though.

  Room by room we went through the apartment, checking the bedrooms next. Everything looked in order, right down to the messy bedsheets. Gemma never made the bed. The sight of them gave me a terrible pang of grief. Be safe, Gemma. Please be safe.

  Last was the dining room. I swallowed hard, wondering if we’d see the secret door sealed and intact. Maybe Gemma had hid herself . . .

  My hopes were dashed the moment we went in. The dining room was destroyed, two feet of debris covering the floor. The secret door hung open. “How is this even possible?” I asked as Rand approached the secret door. “How can someone destroy so much? This must have taken them hours. And for what?”

  “To send a message to us,” Rand said, leading the way to the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, he sniffed the air again and turned back to me. “I taste none of her blood on the air, only the vampires. They came here, but they did not hurt Gemma. She went with them, and when she left, she was alive.”

  I sagged with relief. “Oh, thank God.” Gemma was all right for now. Whatever else happened, I could still save her.

  Then I looked at the destroyed room around me. A horrible thought crossed my mind. “Oh . . . oh no.” I pushed past Rand, heading down the spiral stairs.

  “She is not down there, Lindsey,” Rand called after me, a few steps behind. “I do not scent her—”

  “The anhua!” I interrupted. “The pottery!”

  By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was frantic. I fumbled on the end of the railing, looking for the flashlight we’d kept attached to a cord there. I clicked on the light.

  Shards of pottery were everywhere. All those priceless treasures, lovingly packed away and hidden for centuries . . . destroyed. One triangle was near my shoe, and I reached down to pick it up. Plain white. I shone the light against the other side and saw the fine etching of a bird shine through.

  It was a piece of an anhua jar. Or rather, what was left of an anhua jar. The priceless jars should’ve been in a museum. More than that, they were going to have saved me and Gemma from being broke.

  I burst into tears. Everything I touched was ruined. The shattered anhua broke my heart. It had been perfect for decades, preserved to a degree I’d barely seen before. And now, because I hadn’t been able to keep myself from sticking my nose into a coffin to see what was inside it, it was destroyed. It was more than just the money it would have brought in for me and Gemma.

  It was everything.

  And now I didn’t even have my best friend at my side. She was in danger, and it was all because of me.

  I sobbed, clutching the pottery fragment, and let the flashlight drop. What did it matter if I saw the rest of the room? I knew. They would’ve left nothing in one piece. Everything would be broken, shattered, decimated, obliterated because they wanted to scare us. To bring us down. To make us afraid.

  Well, mission accomplished. I was completely and utterly demoralized.

  The warm, spicy scent of vampire touched my nose a moment before I felt Rand’s hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get her back, Lindsey. Do not worry. Guy has no reason to harm her. And in all the years I knew him, I never found him to be indiscriminately cruel.”

  Yeah, but six hundred years have passed, I wanted to tell him. I just sniffed and stared at the piece of pottery in my hand. “I’m ruining everything,” I told him softly. “Gemma trusted me to take care of things, and now her life is in danger.”

  “We’ll find her,” he told me, brushing his fingers over my cheek. “This I promise you.”

  “I should have known when she didn’t text me,” I said, pulling out my phone. I stared at my quiet screen, wishing my phone would vibrate with an incoming message from Gemma. Something. Anything. I clicked on Call, half expecting it to start ringing upstairs, or down here. They wouldn’t have let her take her phone, would they?

  To my surprise, someone picked up on the other line. “I was wondering when you would say hello.” The voice was unfamiliar, masculine. A light accent. “I don’t respond to text messages. All that typing. It’s annoying.”

  “You . . .” I was so startled that I couldn’t think. “Who is this?”

  The man made an annoyed sound. “Who do you think this is?”

  “You . . . You took Gemma. Where is she? Let me talk
to her!”

  “She’s fine, for now,” the man on the other end said. “Do me a favor and put Rand on.”

  “First I want to talk to Gemma.”

  “No, you’re going to do what I say and put Rand on the phone, because I’m the one controlling things here.” The voice was utterly pleasant, but there was a layer of steel underneath that warned me not to push him.

  Wordless, I handed the phone to Rand.

  He stared down at it, frowning at me. Then, gingerly, he raised it to his ear, waiting.

  Guy must have said something. Rand started, surprised, and my phone went crashing to the ground.

  I gasped, scrambling to pick it up. The screen was cracked, but the phone didn’t show that the call had been dropped. Nervous, I put the phone back to my ear. “Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” he snarled. “Perhaps you explain how to use a phone before you hand it over?”

  “Right. I’m doing that now,” I said frantically. I held the phone out to Rand. “You hold this to your ear and he’s going to talk to you.”

  “Guy,” he said, startled. “He has put his mind into this thing?”

  “No, it’s just his voice from a distance.” Hadn’t he seen me use my phone before now? What did he think I was doing with it all this time? I hadn’t called anyone, but I’d texted . . . Maybe he didn’t correlate texting with actual communication. “Look, just take it, okay? He’s going to talk to you—”

  Rand was aghast. “His spirit?”

  “No, him,” I said. “I promise it’s him. He’s not here, but his voice is.”

  Rand frowned at me, clearly suspicious, but he took the phone when I urged him to again. This time, when the stranger spoke, I was ready to grab the phone if Rand dropped it. Instead, he held it awkwardly, giving it an occasional startled look. He stared into space, as if clearly unable to believe what he was hearing. Then he looked back at me. “I wish to tell him something.”

  “Just speak,” I said impatiently. “He’ll hear you.”

  “I wish to tell you something,” Rand yelled.

  I winced. “Speak normally.”

  “Give us back Gemma,” he said into the phone. “She is not part of whatever vendetta you have created, Guy.”

  I waited on pins and needles, listening. So it was Guy on the phone with the soft accent. There was silence for a long moment, then Rand shook his head.

  “He can’t hear that,” I whispered.

  Rand looked over at me. Then he stared into space again, Guy clearly talking on the other end of the phone. After a moment Rand said, “Then we shall exchange.”

  Exchange who? I wanted to nudge Rand, but he wasn’t good at multitasking.

  “Yes.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Yes. But the agreement is null if you harm the girl.” Pause. “Yes.” Pause. “I care naught for it.” Pause again. “Very well. We await your message.”

  He looked over at me, phone still at his ear. “He is making curious horn noises now.”

  Horn noises? I took the phone from him, and the disconnect signal blared in my ear. I clicked off the call. “What did he say?” I asked eagerly. “Is Gemma all right?”

  “She is his guest,” Rand told me. “She is fine. And he will contact us again in one week to do a prisoner exchange.”

  “A prisoner exchange?” I sputtered.

  “Me for Gemma.” Rand’s face was full of shadow in the dim light of my cell phone.

  “What? We can’t do that. And a week? Why are we waiting a week?”

  “Likely we are waiting so he can lay his trap.”

  “We can’t—”

  “We can and we will,” Rand interrupted me, eyes gleaming with menace. “But we’re not going to wait a week. We’re going to find him and destroy him ourselves.”

  Fourteen

  Once I calmed down, we headed out to a restaurant for a bite to eat. With all the mess in the house, it was near impossible to get to the kitchen, but Rand had insisted that I eat to keep up my strength. I wasn’t big on the idea—just the thought of Gemma in the hands of the enemy made my stomach shrivel, and I hadn’t been able to even think of eating.

  Gelato helped, though. Especially Italian gelato. Now, with a cone in hand, I sat across from Rand at a tiny all-night café and licked my cone while sipping a coffee that was placed in front of Rand so we’d look “normal.” Even though I’d protested getting food, I found that I was ravenous, and every lick of the gelato was heaven itself.

  “Tell me again how this is going to work?” I leaned in to catch a drip on the side of my cone.

  Rand stared at me.

  “Quit watching me.”

  “I cannot help it. Every time your tongue darts out, I think impure thoughts.”

  Well . . . that made a girl want to put down her gelato. Almost. “Can we focus please?”

  “I’m trying. Watching you eat is very distracting. Perhaps you should have eaten bread instead.”

  “Just tell me what you’re thinking about the plans already.”

  He gave his head a little shake to clear it, then glanced out the window. “My plan is simple. Guy said he has Gemma and she is a guest in his home. He says he will send instructions in a week so we can meet them at a location that is conducive to both parties. However, he forgets one thing.”

  “That you can track him by his blood, right?”

  He nodded, still not watching me as I ate my gelato. Was it bothering him that much? Did vampires have a mouth fetish? Probably. I resolved to try to eat it as unsexily as possible so we could continue our conversation. “That is correct,” he said. “We can approach with the element of surprise.”

  “Um, correct me if I’m wrong”—I felt the need to point it out—“but if you can track him, he can track you, right? So how does that give us an advantage if he’s going to know we’re coming?”

  “We are not going together.”

  I paused. “We . . . what?”

  “You’ll need to go in alone to rescue Gemma.”

  I stared at him, aghast. “This is a terrible plan. Me? Go in alone?”

  “I do not like it, either,” Rand agreed, “but we do not have many options.”

  “I can think of one big one—you know, waiting for Guy to invite us and we meet him.”

  Rand’s mouth quirked. “You would turn me over to him?”

  Shoot. No, I wouldn’t. “I don’t suppose we could overpower them at the meet and greet?”

  “We do not know he would go there alone,” Rand said. “What if he has made a hundred vampires at this point and they will all be waiting for us?”

  Ugh. I didn’t want to consider it. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Anything is possible. It has been six hundred years, Lindsey. He has had time to build himself an army if he wished.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Rand closed his eyes, turning his head as if sensing something. “I can feel him through our shared connection. He has moved back and forth some, but remains in the same location over and over again. North of here. I think we will find he has a dwelling and it is there he has likely taken Gemma.”

  “And I’m going to go in there alone?” I shook my head, not liking this idea. “How is this going to work?”

  “We will travel with each other until we get close. Then we will separate. I will go in one direction and draw his men away. While I do this, you will sneak into his keep and find Gemma and rescue her. My presence will draw away any guards he has, and you will go about unmolested.”

  “But what if he thinks we’re going after him and then decides to hurt Gemma?”

  Rand shook his head. “As I have said before, he gains no advantage in hurting her. The moment she dies, he loses all leverage.”

  “And what if you die?”

  His smile was wintry. “Then that solves all of our problems, does it not?”

  “No, it does not,” I snapped. “Don’t even suggest i
t.”

  He shrugged.

  Feeling a little desperate, I took one last lick of my cone, but it tasted like ashes. “I’m not a big fan of this plan, but if it’s all we’ve got, we’ll make it work.”

  “Mmm.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I must have sounded annoyed, because Rand flashed me an apologetic grin. “It means this is all very strange. Why Guy interests himself with me, I am not certain.” Rand rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Guy has always been more of a soldier than a leader. This turn of events makes no sense to me, but then again, nothing has made sense since my staking. Unless I miss my guess, someone else is commanding and Guy is simply following orders.”

  “So someone else wants you dead,” I pointed out. “Is there anyone that wants you alive? Anyone at all?”

  The look on his face was weary, sad. “It would be easier for everyone if I was dead, would it not?”

  “Don’t say that,” I told him. The look of intense loneliness on his face made me hurt for him. I tossed the rest of my gelato in the coffee cup and took his fingers in mine, not even caring that they were cold to the touch. “I care about you. I want you alive.” I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’re going to figure this out, and we’re going to save Gemma. Figure out who’s after you—solve that problem, and then we can return to our normal lives.”

  But . . . what would happen with Rand once we “solved” the problem of the other vampires? It was clear he had no allies except me. Dropping him off with a buddy was no longer an option. Nor was simply abandoning him to figure stuff out on his own.

  Rand was now mine, whether I liked it or not.

  And oddly enough, I kind of liked it. I rolled around the idea of him returning home with me and Gemma. It’d be rough getting him into the States, but we could work an amnesia angle if we had to. Or since he didn’t have to breathe, we could maybe ship him back home. Whatever. We’d figure something out. Regardless, he was coming with me.

  He was mine. I gave his hand another squeeze. “Have I ever told you about my home? Nebraska? I think you’d like it. It’s very flat, and in the summer it’s superhot, and in the winter it’s incredibly cold, but it’s nice and the people are friendly. There’s lots of cows and corn and, um, sunshine. Plenty of room to stretch out and buy some land, if that’s what you’re into.”