The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  Renata turned and looked right at Jill.

  “Well,” she said. “What do we do now?”

  Her fangs out, blood all over her face, her dress blown to pieces, Renata was a terrifying sight.

  “Look at you,” she said. “Using your body to protect the boy. You’re really something, Jill Wentworth. I wish I knew you better.”

  Jill’s eyes scanned the ground. Glass, bullets, dresses, and knives were everywhere.

  “Go ahead,” Renata said. “You’re thinking of picking up one of the knives. Do it.”

  Jill stood in place.

  “I want you to pick up a knife,” said Renata. “It will be more sporting that way.”

  Jill remained frozen.

  “Pick up a knife!” Renata commanded, and Jill found herself crouching to the floor against her will. As her hand reached for a knife, she saw Nicky crouched behind one of the pedestals, knife in hand, about to make a move.

  The vision came to Jill as she stood up. She would charge Renata from the front, distracting her enough so that Nicky had a chance to get her from behind. While Renata took care of Jill, Nicky would have a clear shot to stab her in the heart.

  There was no further thought to it than that. By the time Jill was back on her feet, the knife was raised and she was charging at Renata. She knew this was the end for her and she did it anyway. She knew Renata would kill her in less than a second, but she also knew it was the only chance they had to end this.

  Either Jill died right now, or they all died a few minutes later. It was an easy choice to make. It was the right thing to do.

  Renata smiled as Jill charged, opening her arms and baring her chest, as if showing Jill right where to stab her. Jill took the bait. With everything she had, she thrust the knife at Renata’s heart.

  She never made contact. Renata moved so quickly Jill couldn’t make any sense of it, but one second she was stabbing at her chest, and the next she was sliding across the floor, having been flung so hard she crashed into the wall. She had to close her eyes for a second—the impact of her back against the wall was immense. When she opened them, she saw Renata standing in the middle of the room, lifting Nicky off the floor by her neck.

  There was a knife sticking out of Renata’s back. Nicky had made contact, but she missed the heart. Now Renata had Nicky by the throat.

  “You, my darling, were interesting to me once,” Renata said. “But you’ve tested my patience too many times. I’m going to enjoy watching you die.”

  Nicky’s face was bright red. Her eyes were bulging. Renata was choking her to death.

  “I want you to see something before you go,” Renata said. “You think you were so clever with your little computer trick back in Italy. Your little stunt accomplished nothing. Everything important you erased from Falkon’s computer is hanging safely around my neck.”

  Her right hand still holding Nicky aloft, with her left hand, Renata reached for the silver pendant around her neck. As her fingers touched the pendant, a look of panic came over her eyes.

  “No,” she said, lifting the pendant in front of her face. “No, this isn’t happening.”

  Whatever shape the pendant on Renata’s neck was supposed to be, Jill was certain this wasn’t it. The pendant Renata was holding in front of her face looked like a broken tooth.

  “The bullets!” she said. “My necklace!”

  She was so distraught over her broken pendant she dropped Nicky to the ground so she could inspect it with two hands. And while Renata gazed at the pendant’s remains, the slave who had opened the door to this room, the slave who was oddly interested in Nicky, so much so that he had grabbed a knife and stood in front of her before the conflict began, appeared from behind one of the pedestals.

  Frankie. That was what Renata called him. Frankie, the towering beast of a boy, moved with so much speed Renata didn’t have time to react. With three monstrous steps, Frankie crossed the room, and decked Renata in the face with a punch so forceful it sent her flying off her feet.

  Jill had never seen anything like it. It was as if, in that brief instant, human and vampire switched roles. Frankie was the fast one, the strong one, and Renata was the helpless victim. Frankie’s punch landed so hard Jill heard the bones shatter, saw the face cave in, and when Renata landed on the floor, Jill knew she was out.

  If Renata were human, that punch would have killed her. Maybe, for a second or two, it did. Maybe her brain was so traumatized from the blow she was dead when she landed.

  Maybe that’s why she was slow to open her eyes.

  Renata out cold, Frankie had time to grab a knife from the floor. The knife he grabbed was the one Renata had used in this year’s performance. It was much bigger than the others, more machete than knife. Holding it in his hands, Frankie muttered something under his breath, something like I look out for Nicky and she looks out for me.

  Giant knife in hand, he ran to Renata, who was just beginning to open her eyes.

  Her last words were, “Frankie, why?”

  With one powerful swing, Frankie cut off Renata’s head.

  Chapter 53

  Elisa was her name. A nineteen-year-old with long brown hair and a light complexion, Falkon found the girl stranded on the side of the road at the base of the mountain and knew right away what he wanted to do with her.

  Falkon led her all the way up the mountain and into the mine shaft. They walked along the broken tracks, arriving at the hole, and he said, “Are you afraid of heights, Elisa?”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “What about the darkness?” Falkon said. “Does the darkness bother you?”

  “I do not like the dark, Master” she said.

  “Very nice,” Falkon said. “You’ll do quite well.”

  He snapped his fingers and the spell was broken. The fear that came over her face was so intense that, for a few seconds, it washed away all the pain and disappointment of the past few days.

  Yes, Nicky Bloom had destroyed years of research.

  Yes, Celeste Allen was dead.

  Yes, Sergio had gotten away. After three nights of looking, he was certain of it. The cowardly vampire who had hidden himself for half a millennium had disappeared once again.

  But he forgot all of that when he saw the fear in Elisa’s eyes.

  “Scream for me,” he whispered. “As loud as you can.”

  He gave her a gentle push and she fell down the mine shaft. Her scream was the best he had ever heard. A mezzo-soprano with rich overtones and incredible passion, this girl was truly terrified and it came through in the sound she made as she plummeted to the bottom.

  She landed with such a loud thud that Falkon feared she had been killed on impact, but then she let out a little moan, ever so quiet.

  He jumped to the bottom.

  “Congratulations, Elisa,” he said. “I have given purpose to your meaningless life. Before tonight you were on a slow, agonizing march into old age. I have spared you from that. Tonight you have the great privilege of becoming food for an immortal.”

  “Which immortal?” came a voice from the darkness. “There are several of us down here.”

  Falkon’s blood ran cold at the sound of that voice. Light and airy, it was a voice he never expected to hear again.

  He turned to see a pair of eyes looking at him from deep in the darkness. Bright green, piercing, the eyes practically glowed as they stared at him.

  “Daciana,” he said. “You got out of your cage.”

  Another voice, also familiar, also unexpected, sounded from a different part of the cave.

  “November seventh in the year one thousand and eight,” the voice said. It was Sergio. He jumped down from a rock on the far wall, landing a few feet away from Falkon. “That was the date of your creation.”

  Falkon smiled. “Indeed it was,” he said. “I’m so honored you took the time to learn my birthday.”

  “A thousand years and some change,” Sergio said, taking a step closer. “That’s a long t
ime. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to grow so old.”

  “I can tell you a little about it,” Daciana said. She too was making a slow approach. Falkon’s fangs and claws were at the ready. It was clear these two meant to take him together.

  “When you start counting the time in centuries,” Daciana continued, “You find it hard to keep the memories sorted. It’s a part of immortality no one warns you about. When you get as old as Falkon and me, you start to lose track of your many lifetimes’ worth of memories. Space in your brain is at such a premium that only the most notable and interesting ideas are allowed to reside there.”

  “Now I understand,” Sergio said, “With so little memory in your mind, you couldn’t help but make the mistake, could you Falkon?”

  “You two are cute,” Falkon said. “Speaking to me about my mistakes when I am your elder! Acting like you can turn back the clock and regain the power I have already stolen from you!”

  “1-1-0-7-0-8,” Sergio said. “The date of your creation. Four times I watched Nicky punch in that code at the laboratory. It was quite amusing, actually. You spent so much money securing all your precious research, but you used the same six-digit code to open every door.”

  “He had no other choice,” said Daciana. “I know how it is. There isn’t room in your mind to hang onto all the codes and passwords the modern world demands of us.”

  “But he couldn’t even be bothered to use a separate code on your cage?” Sergio said. “I mean, come on Falkon. As soon as I found Daciana down here, I knew exactly which numbers to enter to open the door.”

  “Enough talk!” Falkon yelled. “If we are to do this, let us do it now!”

  It took only a minute. One on one, Falkon could have killed either of these vampires. But together, they were too much for him. The last image Falkon saw before he died was the smile on Daciana’s face as she bit into his throat.

  Chapter 54

  For the second time, Jill dialed triple zero on her cell phone to broadcast an emergency message to the entire Network.

  This time, she wasn’t ignored.

  Alvin was the first to arrive, showing up at the front door right away. Eve was only a few minutes behind him.

  Within the hour, dozens of agents and supporters of the Network were in Renata’s mansion asking what they could do to help. Phillip instructed everyone that their first task was to get the servants out of here so they could be deprogrammed and set free. Renata’s servants, who roamed the halls like lost children after their master was killed, went without any fuss. More than fifty innocent people, some born on the Farm, some stolen off the streets, were driven away in vans, cars, and pickup trucks. It had to be one of the largest rescues in the history of the Network.

  Gordon’s going to be very busy, Jill thought.

  Nicky left in a car with Frankie. Phillip and Helena took Ryan to the safe house in Arlington. Alvin took Patrick’s body to a coroner in Bethesda. By sunup, Jill was the only one from the core group who was still at the mansion. Jill and fifty people she didn’t know, all of whom were looking to her to find out what they should do next.

  “Find every set of keys in the house,” she said. “There are enough limos, cars, and vans on this property that we can haul everything out of that mansion that the Network would ever want.”

  They found all the keys, and drove Renata’s entire fleet of automobiles to the back door.

  “Take out all the computers and load them up,” she said. “Intel, more than anything else, is what we need from this place.”

  Eager to do as she asked, everyone went searching for computer equipment, and filled an entire van with it.

  “Files and paperwork,” she said. “There’s a lot of history in this mansion. This is a rare opportunity for the Network to learn everything the vampires have been keeping from us.”

  They filled a van and two limos with papers dating all the way back to the 1940’s.

  She had them take all the priceless artwork down from the gallery. They found a vault full of video and audio footage, and took it all. There was an excitement in the air, a feeling that they were doing something of huge historical significance.

  I want to take the war to them. I want the predators to become the prey.

  Jill had written those words on an anonymous Internet message board when she was thirteen. Now, she stood in front of Renata’s mansion with a crowd of Network supporters eager to do as she asked because she had made those words come true. She had taken the war to the vampires, and today, even if only for a short time, the predators had become the prey.

  Jill was an angry teen with Mommy issues when she wrote her Internet diatribes. But today, as she looked upon the spoils of her first victory in that war, she knew she wasn’t in this because of some adolescent desire to rebel. Not anymore. She was in the Network because she chose to do what was right.

  They found a tub of kerosene in Renata’s garage and three cans of gasoline in her shed. The last order Jill gave the group was to burn the entire mansion to the ground.

  *****

  Twelve hours later, Jill sat alone at the back of the Red Rocket Club in Alexandria, sipping on water while she watched Zack’s band play for an enthusiastic crowd.

  He looked happy up there, banging on the drums, smiling at his friends in the band, interacting with the audience. There was no doubt in her mind that his life was better now that she was out of it.

  She stayed for the entire concert, singing along and cheering with the crowd after every number. When it was over, she walked out to the dirt parking lot, where she found her car had been boxed in.

  She leaned against the back bumper and pulled out her phone, thinking she’d kill time on the Internet until the lot cleared enough for her to leave.

  “It’s no good. This bar doesn’t empty out until two-thirty most nights.”

  Her heart jumped. No, this isn’t happening, she thought. This isn’t why I came here.

  She looked up. He was standing just a few feet away, backlit by the glare of the lone light in the parking light.

  God, he was beautiful.

  “Do I know you?” Zack said. “I feel like we’ve met somewhere before.”

  Jill waited a second before answering. There were, after all, so many truthful answers to this question.

  But she opted for the lie. “No,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  “See, now that you’ve said something, I swear I know you. Your voice…has anyone ever told you that you have a really nice voice?”

  You have, she thought.

  He stepped closer and held out his hand. “My name’s Zack,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  She thought about running away. Or punching him in the face. Or screaming for him to get away from her. Anything to stop this from happening. To prevent him from falling into the ravine that was her life for a second time.

  But she couldn’t. She was looking at his eyes now, and she realized that, in his way, Zack was as powerful as any vampire. When you looked in a vampire’s eyes, as Jill had now done more than once, you saw eternity. It was an incredibly seductive thing to see, and you wanted to go to it. You wanted to let them take you inside so you might know what it’s like to live without end.

  In Zack’s eyes, she saw something equally powerful, but different. In that electric blue of his eyes, a color that seemed to shine even in the dim light of the parking light, Jill didn’t see eternity. She saw happiness.

  And she couldn’t help herself. She held out her hand.

  “My name is Jill,” she said. “Jill Wentworth.”

  ***

  END OF BOOK 3 – KEEP READING TO LEARN ABOUT GIRLS WEARING BLACK BOOK 4

  Thank you for reading! If you’ve reached this screen, you’ve been with me for three books! I am honored you’re here.

  I need to acknowledge Chris Stenger, who did the cover for this book as he has for all of them. I also need to thank my wife, Julie, who has become much more than a re
ader and editor on this series. Her comments throughout the process have guided the entire story.

  When I started Girls Wearing Black, I imagined six or seven novels. Now I think it can be done in four or five. As the next book comes together, I’ll let you know on the web site if we’re coming to an end or not.

  Writers thrive on honest reviews, especially indies like me. If you have made it this far in the series, you probably have some good feedback to help other readers. Please, take a moment to leave a review on your favorite books site.

  And I love getting your emails! spencerbaum75@gmail.com

  Visit me on www.spencerbaum.net for updates. Thanks again!

  Spencer Baum

  July 10, 2013