by Hannah Jayne
I heard chains rattle and the scratch of fingernails dragging across concrete. Then a low, menacing growl. “You stay away from her, Oliver.”
I opened my eyes and tried not to gape; Mr. Sampson’s shirt was splitting all the way down the arms, exposing bulging, pulsing muscles lined with soft, brown downy fur. His pants had split the same way, and I was staring at hind flanks and thick legs that were pulling taut against his chains. Mr. Sampson’s elegant hands had morphed into heavy, clawed paws, with long, black nails gripping at the concrete. His lips were thin and curled back against a row of sharp canine teeth, glistening with saliva. Even hunched on all fours, he was taller than I was standing up.
“Mr. Sampson?” I whispered.
One pointed, brown wolf ear twitched, but Mr. Sampson did not turn to face me. He kept his dark eyes trained on the chief, those sharp teeth exposed, the growl still low and rumbling as it emanated from his thick barrel chest.
Chief Oliver bent down and slapped his knees with his palms, laughing. “Aw! The puppy is very protective of his little girlfriend, isn’t he?” He wiped his eyes with his balled fists and chuckled some more. “That’s just precious.”
Mr. Sampson’s eyes narrowed, and his growl rumbled even deeper, louder, his shoulders tensing. I could hear the slow tear of the fabric of his shirt as his thick shoulder blades, covered still with that downy brown fur, became exposed. He nipped at the air, just a few centimeters from Chief Oliver’s fat jowls. Mr. Sampson’s jaws clamped shut with a frightening snap, bits of saliva spraying on the concrete. Chief Oliver’s head jerked back, and then he laughed, a roaring, horrible laugh and delivered a closed-fist thump to the top of Mr. Sampson’s head. The sound of the heavy smack of hand to head made my eyes water, and my heart broke when I heard Mr. Sampson’s pained squeal.
“I’m done with playing. Come on, you.” Chief Oliver dug his fingers into my arm, and I gasped, the pain reverberating through my body. He sunk a skeleton key into the lock, and my cuffs snapped open. I tried to squirm away, but his hands were over me immediately. He lifted me up easily and tossed my whole body over one shoulder as though I were a sack of potatoes. My ribs crunched against his shoulder, and I let out a pained, “Ooaf!” My forehead snapped against the chief’s spine, and in one fell swoop he tossed me, flat-backed, onto the table and clicked a new set of cuffs around my ankles. The breath left my body as he whipped off my sweatshirt, and before I could react, he clipped a new set of cuffs around my wrists.
I could hear my heart thundering in my ears, my blood hot and pulsing through my veins. My throat started to close, but I didn’t think I even had the will to cry anymore. My eyes were raw and painful. I glanced to the left, seeing the jeweled handle of the Sword of Bethesda on the table next to me.
The chief pulled off another velvet cloth, this one covering a small table lined with thick black candles and a large shallow metal bowl. A wave of nausea washed over me as I spotted two glass jars on the table as well—one containing a semi-fresh set of eyeballs, the second, the bloody remains of a human heart. My gag became a wail as I felt myself being jerked by the ankles off the table, my head thunking with each lurch of my body. The chief was hunkered on the other side of the table, turning a large crank. My body slid with each turn, and soon I was completely upside down, my red hair skimming the tabletop, my arms dangling over my head.
“Oliver, please!” Mr. Sampson said as I hung from my ankles. “Please don’t do this to Sophie.”
The chief’s eyes, now narrow slits, went to me and then to Mr. Sampson, chained and pleading in the corner.
“You don’t have to do this, Oliver, please. We can work something out.”
“Don’t worry, Pete. There’ll be time for you. Once our little half-breed here”—Chief Oliver poked my chest with his index finger—“is bled dry, you’ll be up.” He smiled jovially. “Of course you’ll be a dog by then. But not to worry; I’ve always been an animal lover.” He snatched up the sword he’d been fingering all night. “The Sword of Bethesda will make quick work of skinning you”—he frowned—“unfortunately. I was, in fact, hoping it’d be a little rougher for you. Oh well, can’t win everything.”
“This will never happen, Oliver,” Mr. Sampson snarled.
“Because of you darned kids? Get over it, Scooby Doo—it’s done.” He tapped the jar of eyeballs with the tip of the sword. “Things are already set in motion. Now—” Chief Oliver positioned the metal bowl just under my head and then softly poked my collarbone with the knife. His tongue darted over his lips, and he eyed me. “You ready for this?”
I started to tremble when the chief laid the cool blade against my jugular. I tried to angle away, but my body went leaden as I felt the pressure build against my skin. The chief eyed me and licked the edge of his tooth as he angled the tip of the sword against my vein. I saw the muscle in his arm flex, felt the cool, tingling prick of metal on skin—and then saw him frown. He used the tip of the sword to poke at me again, this time hard enough to send my body swinging.
“What the hell?” he muttered, staring at the blade. He poked the tip with his hand, pulled back when a velvety cap of blood surfaced on his index finger.
I swung from my ankles closer to the chief and his sword, and he reached out with it, this time poking me in the ribs.
I giggled freakishly, the cold blade tickling me.
The chief blinked, his caterpillar eyebrows crawling together. He looked at his sword and then up at me and then eyed Sampson.
“What is this?” he snarled.
Sampson sat back on his haunches. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I swung back once more, and again the chief poked the sword into my flesh. Again, it bounced off.
The chief stepped forward and in one fell swoop, sliced the blade over the top of Mr. Sampson’s head.
“Sampson!” I shrieked, watching a cascade of newly shorn dark hair flutter to the ground.
“Why won’t this work on her?” the chief asked, ignoring me.
Sampson shrugged, the tiniest smile playing on his curled lips. The chief held the blade to Sampson now, and I could see the chief’s knuckles pale as he pressed the blade hard into Sampson’s flesh, thin streams of blood rushing over the blade.
“It won’t work because the blade is charmed!” I yelled. “Leave him alone!”
The chief turned to me now. He looked at the blade and then at me. “It is charmed. And you are?”
I smiled weakly. “Unaffected by charmed objects. And most magics.”
The chief crossed his Snuggie-clad arms in front of his chest. “Well, I’ll be. That’s a new one.”
“So …” I said, my eyes scanning the chief’s table de horrors. “You might want to let me go. I’d probably mess up your whole little operation here. You know”—I tried to shrug—“since the magic won’t affect me, my blood is probably useless for you.”
The chief cocked his head. “Or that much more powerful. Magical immunity,” he mused, “I hadn’t thought of that. This is really my lucky day!”
He dropped the sword onto the floor and reached into his Snuggie, producing a Leatherman. He grinned as he swung out a three-inch blade. “You’re not immune to this, are you? It’ll take longer and hurt more, but I’m a very patient man.”
All the blood had rushed to my head, and a tear rolled up over my eyebrow and landed with a thud in the metal bowl. This seemed to amuse the chief even more. He grinned, then laid the Leatherman blade flat across his outstretched palm and tugged it through the skin in one slick, elegant slice. He closed his eyes as though savoring the ecstasy of the pain as his blood dripped in thick, velvet-red drops into the metal pan.
“Oliver, no! If you mix your blood with Sophie’s this way you will bleed out your humanity—and hers!” Mr. Sampson said, his face contorted in anguish.
The chief glared at Sampson, his narrowed eyes a rich mix of violet and crimson, his lips held in a disgusted, grotesque grin.
“Trust m
e—Sophie won’t need hers. And what has humanity ever done?” Chief Oliver spat. “It puts murderers back on the street; it sends rapists back to the raped. It seeps through the gutters; it slices”—his eyes washed over his open wound—“through the demons of this city as they tear out the throats of our children. Humanity shouldn’t exist in this city. Humanity should be stamped out.” He clenched his fist, the blood oozing like red ribbons through his fingers and pooling into the bowl.
“Oh God,” I moaned, wriggling from my ankle chains. “Oh God!” I wrinkled my nose against the noxious stench of Chief Oliver’s blood—metallic, with the unmistakable waft of—mold?
I squirmed again, and the chief glared at me. “Stop that!” he barked.
I waggled anyway—really, what did I have to lose? And craned my neck to peer behind me out the little window. And there, pressed up against the glass, was the most beautiful face I’d ever seen: gray, with thin black lips encircling yellowed, snaggleteeth, caterpillar eyebrows framing beady black eyes. I sucked in a mold-scented breath, and Steve pressed one stubby troll finger up to his pursed lips, silencing me.
I turned my head back around, coming nose to nose with the dull tip of Chief Oliver’s Leatherman blade. If I had any saliva left in my mouth, I would have gulped. Instead, I opened my mouth and let out a wailing scream while doing my best to flop around like a caught fish, bashing my arms around in the air in front of me.
“Ahhh! Help me, help me, help me! I’m down here! The chief is crazy! He’s going to kill us!” I continued flopping and waggling, hoping to buy myself some time, while the chief stabbed wildly at the air in front of me.
“Stop!” The blade came slicing down a half inch from my ear. Doing! Slice, slice. “That!”
“Agh!” I shrieked as the end of the blade caught my shoulder, ripping into the flesh. I yanked myself back while the chief grabbed at the knife, stuck in my flesh.
“Steve!” I howled. “Steeeeve!”
There was a crash and then the tinkling of broken glass. The chief and I both craned our necks, staring down at Steve, lying on his side, showered with shards of glass. In a flash Steve was up on his small troll feet and in full karate stance. The chief grinned down at Steve.
“This is the cavalry?” Chief Oliver put his hands on his hips, yanked the Leatherman from my shoulder, and picked up the Sword of Bethesda again. He held one knife in each hand, battle stance ready, and grinned.
I howled.
“Steve is Sophie’s hero! You will not hurt my Sophie!” Steve yelled before launching himself, snaggleteeth bared, into the chief’s shins.
“Yeooooowwww!” The chief howled, pounding his fist against Steve’s bald head.
“Get him, Steve!” I shouted, flopping around ineffectually, my shoulder wound gaping and cold.
The chief centered his narrowed, hateful eyes on me, and I heard the whoosh of wind and then felt a cold tingle from collarbone to armpit. I arched my head forward and saw little pearls of velvety blood beading from a crooked gash across my chest.
“Oh!” I wailed.
“Sophie!” My name was nearly lost in the gurgling growl of Mr. Sampson’s voice as it deepened.
I heard the unmistakable clank of metal clattering against concrete, the splintering of wood, and all at once the chief was laid out on his back, pinned by a fearsome wolf, the brown hair along its spine prickled and raised, its snapping jaws sinking into Chief Oliver’s shoulder, washing the wolf’s fur in a deep red. Steve rolled along on the concrete and ended up on his back, then bounded up, scurrying under the table.
“Oliver!”
I was flopping around, my vision going hazy from the blood rushing to my head and the little rivulets of blood dribbling from my chest and shoulder, but I thought I saw—
“Parker?” I mumbled.
He was standing at the top of the stairs, gun drawn, a gaggle of men in black clothing standing behind him. My head flopped back to where Mr. Sampson was, to the broken chains—and to the enormous werewolf pawing at Chief Oliver.
“Oh God,” I said. “Mr. Sampson?”
The werewolf cocked his head at me, his jaws set hard, the fur around his lips damp with crimson blood and quivering. The velvety brown eyes looked at me, and I could see the familiar crinkle in the corners. The wolf lowered its head, and then, in one fell motion, he bounded from hind legs against the chief’s chest, onto the table underneath my head, and out the broken open window. I choked a cry, the faint scent of Mr. Sampson’s cologne wafting by.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Parker cuffed the moaning police chief and handed him off to a herd of SWAT officers in black flak jackets who came down the stairs, helping to load him on a stretcher. Steve stepped out from under the table and barked directions as Parker came over to me, cobalt eyes wide.
“You’re cut,” he said. “I’ll get a medic.”
I flopped—my best upside-down attempt at a shrug. “It’s not deep,” I said. “I’d just like to get down.” I looked at my blood-stained bra, scanned the room full of police men. “And maybe get a shirt on.”
Parker shrugged out of his flak jacket and whipped off his T-shirt, draping it over me. I was hanging upside down, just a hairsbreadth away from having been drained of my blood by a power-hungry psychopath, and my body betrayed me. It went goose-bumpy and a little flutter in my stomach went down (or up?) to my nether regions as Parker’s fingertips brushed over the naked skin on my abdomen.
Sophie Lawson: Sex-Starved Side of Beef.
“I’d really like to get down now.”
Once Parker and the other SWAT officers had me out of the ankle cuffs and right side up, I sat down hard on the concrete floor, feeling the blood rush back to my limbs. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes, then blinked, for the first time noticing Vlad—black clad, as usual—as he stepped out from the group of SWAT guys and eyed me.
“Vlad, you’re here.”
He looked away sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I told Parker as soon as I put it together about Lucy.”
“Lucy!” My eyes went wide. “Vlad, I’m sorry. I think—I think she’s dead. When I was with the chief, he threw me in his car and she was arguing with him. I heard a gunshot. I think he must have shot her.”
Parker leaned into me. “We’ll check into it, Sophie. Where did this happen? Up at Sampson’s place?”
I nodded. “Yeah, outside.”
Parker stepped over to one of the SWAT officers and told them about Lucy, asked them to check Sampson’s house for any traces of him. I shivered, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“It was terrible, hearing the sound of the gun. I know Lucy tried to kill me and … suck my blood, but, honestly, I hope she’s okay.”
Vlad frowned. “She tried to suck your blood?”
I rubbed at my neck. “It was more like a violent hickey; she didn’t even break the skin. She told me you wouldn’t change her.”
Vlad looked away from me, studied his shoes. “We do have rules.”
“Even the VERM?” I tried to smile, but everything was starting to hurt.
“She thought she wanted to be changed—thought it was a great alternative to her life. She got angry when I wouldn’t do it, when I wouldn’t feed off of her. She smeared blood all over her neck, begged me to change her that night.”
“She told me you bit her. I believed her.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I never gave you reason to think otherwise about me. I knew I should have gotten to Parker sooner. Lucy and I kept fighting, and she started talking about the sword, about all the things that were needed to open the portal—including you. She told me if I didn’t change her that I would be sorry—dead, finally—or sorry. Until she started talking about you, about draining your blood to open the portal, I figured she was just another breather who was convinced she knew how to access the demon world. When I finally realized that she knew what she was talking about, she was already gone. We were both heading to your apartment, but as it turns out, she f
ound you and I found Parker.”
“So you knew Lucy was in on this? Did you know she was in cahoots with the chief?”
Parker stepped up behind Vlad, was silently looking on as Vlad shook his head. “No, not at first—not until I talked to Parker. But I knew she was the one who purchased the Sword of Bethesda.”
I was incredulous. “You did? How? When?”
“It took a while, but I was able to put all the clues together. At first she was questioning me, wanting to know where someone would find the sword. She knew an awful lot about it for—”
“A breather?”
“Yeah. I realized it had to be her. I thought about it, and it all clicked. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you learn to read things about human nature, about primitive desires. I knew Lucy was the one who had the Sword of Bethesda.”
Parker raised an eyebrow, pinning Vlad with a stare.
“And also, she stabbed me with it.”
Parker looked at the ground, smiling.
Vlad rubbed his abdomen. “Kind of ineffectual, but still rather offensive.”
“Oh, Vlad, I’m so sorry.” For the first time I realized that under his black, ankle-length leather duster he was wearing black denim jeans and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt. There was a three-inch gash through the fabric at Buffy’s slim midriff. I smiled. “Nice shirt, though.”
Vlad tried to hold his blank expression steady, but I could see the hint of a smile playing at the edge of his lips. “The irony pleases me.”
Parker bent down next to me, his face drawn with concern. “Okay, enough. We can sort everything out later, and I’ve got a couple of cars headed over to Sampson’s place now. How are you? Are you okay? Are you hurt very badly?”