Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  Holy Mother of God, that was intense. I wasn’t sure if he’d been about to kiss me or kill me, but I was glad he was gone, because I’d been thisclose to peeing my pants or bursting into tears.

  I forgot about him for a moment. I was starving. I dived at the bag and grabbed the water first, dying to wet my tongue. I opened the bottle and took a small sip, swishing the water around my mouth. It tasted fine, but the seal had been broken, as if it had been refilled. I wondered if it had been drugged and vowed to drink as little as possible.

  The sandwich was typical truck–stop fare, white slabs of bread jammed with low–grade salami, but after going so long without eating, it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. The bread, soggy from too much cheap mayonnaise, melted on my tongue as I bit, chewed and swallowed with unnatural speed.

  I wondered how it could be that they would feed me if they were going to kill me, and then the door opened, and Kate was thrown back in to the room. I dropped my sandwich and rushed at the door as it was slammed in my face.

  Kate was bleeding everywhere. I dropped to my knees, helping her to sit up as she trembled violently. Her eyes were blank and unseeing, as if she were staring at something that wasn’t there, something I didn’t even want to guess at. And her shirt was torn open. She had fresh bite marks on her chest, oozing blood, as if her filthy white bra had been yanked down just long enough for someone to sink their teeth into the flesh of her small breasts and suck.

  “Kate!” I said. “Kate!”

  She looked straight through me.

  “What happened?” I asked, as I pulled her onto my lap.

  And something weird happened. She smiled up at the ceiling, and I tried not to hyperventilate as my palms stuck to her bloodied skin.

  “Why are you smiling?” I asked her. “Did you find a way out?”

  “He promised me,” she replied dreamily.

  “Who promised you? What?”

  “His name is Caleb. The chosen one. He promised me.”

  I pressed my hands to her bleeding throat, trying to help her.

  “What did he promise you, Kate? Did he say he’d let us go?”

  She began to cry. “He said he’d let me die, soon.”

  I pulled my hands away and tried to see it from her point of view. How, if I’d been stuck in this room as long as she had, maybe I’d rather bleed to death, too.

  THREE

  Once upon a time, I was just a girl. My name was Mia.

  I wasn’t the first girl that was taken.

  Sure, I had heard all about the girls who were missing, and even though they were only ‘missing’ I knew in my heart that those girls were dead. And my heart broke for them, for their families, just for a moment. Until the thought was replaced by something else, something different, because I couldn’t bear to think about those poor dead girls any longer.

  I felt sad for them. But more than that, I felt glad that they had been strangers – not someone I knew, and certainly not me. Things like that didn’t happen to girls like me.

  They always happened to someone else, and that’s why I barely blinked as I made my way across an empty football field, through a snow–laden parking lot, to meet a fate I had arrogantly assumed was reserved for other people.

  I was a stupid girl.

  And I paid for my stupidity with my life.

  FOUR

  Time was agony. My stomach twisted in a knot for days on end. Kate wouldn’t wake up anymore. She wasn’t dead, but she may as well have been.

  And me, I was so full of anxiety that I threw up every day until there was nothing left but clear bile that burned my throat, my tongue. I wasn’t even hungry any more, not even after I had nothing left inside of me. I was just waiting.

  I got a food delivery once a day, the highlight that broke up the long emptiness. Sometimes it was different people, but most of the time it was Ryan. I tried to talk to him. Bargain with him. I asked him how the weather was outside in the place I didn’t know of. After a few days, two things occurred to me: Firstly, that I was becoming used to this ritual. That, even as afraid as I was, the pattern, the routine, brought me a sense of great relief. Mere days, and I was already a compliant slave, waiting against the wall for my daily visit.

  And secondly, more disturbingly, that I enjoyed Ryan’s visits, looked forward to them, even.

  That realization was terrifying. The fact that this had become my ‘normal’. The fact that I would rather be with a crazed kidnapper than be by myself.

  It felt like I had been there for ever and ever.

  I kept the water bottles lined up on the edge of the decaying bath. One morning, with sun streaming through the crack in the boards that covered the window, I counted them.

  There were twelve. And if Kate had been right about me...

  I had eighteen days left.

  FIVE

  Any day now, they’re going to break me out. Somebody is going to come for me. Somebody is going to save me.

  Nobody came for me. Nobody saved me.

  I don’t know why I thought they would.

  SIX

  Day number thirteen, my lucky number, sparked a change in my routine. Along with my morning meal I got another plastic bag, this one packed with fresh clothes. A pair of jeans. A red t-shirt. Clean underwear. A bar of soap. A toothbrush. And a faucet fitting.

  I stared at the bag in horror. Someone wanted me clean, dressed nicely, and with minty-fresh breath. It sounds so trivial now, but I agonized over whether or not to clean myself up and change my almost two–week–old outfit. Kate watched me, barely awake, but she didn’t offer any explanation. And I didn’t ask. I was tired of her. She never had anything good to say.

  He appeared again in the doorway, dressed impeccably as always in a pair of dark blue jeans and a black shirt with rolled–up sleeves, the whites of his dark eyes the brightest thing in his ensemble. He still hadn’t spoken more than five words to me since that first day when he’d pressed up against me and threatened to punch me in the face again, but equally, he hadn’t hurt me. He hadn’t done anything except toss a bag of food in my room once a day and slam the door shut again.

  “Get up.”

  I slid up the wall I was leaning on, holding the faucet fitting in my fist behind my back. I was plotting how I was going to surprise him by smashing it into his face when he gave me a look that said, Don’t even try.

  “Give me that.” He lunged forward faster than I could follow, snatched at my arm, and pried the faucet fitting from my cold fingers. I stared back at him like a sullen child. Motherfucker.

  He flicked his gaze up and down my body, clearly unhappy. “You didn’t clean yourself up. Where are your shoes?”

  “You want me to look pretty for you? Please.”

  He rolled his eyes and took my arm, dragging me out of the room I hadn’t left in two weeks, into a nondescript beige and concrete hallway that seemed to stretch out forever.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, my voice higher than it should have been.

  “To see the boss,” he answered. I realized it was one of the first questions he’d answered straight, without a double meaning.

  “Who?” I asked. “Caleb?”

  He stopped then, tugged my arm so we were facing each other. His dark blue eyes were surrounded by tiny flecks of gold that seemed to burn into my flesh.

  We were alone in a sea of closed doors that all appeared identical. I wondered how many other girls were waiting behind those doors, like me.

  “If you keep quiet, it won’t be as bad,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t try your smart–ass tactics on him. He will hurt you very badly, do you understand?”

  I looked up at him in utter confusion. “What do you care?” I asked. “You’re the one who took me. You don’t even know me. So tell me, tough guy – what do you care?”

  The mask went back on. “I don’t,” he said fiercely. “I’m the lucky guy who’ll have to clean your blood off the floor, that’s all.”
/>
  “Yeah, well,” I responded lamely, “If you’re really a vampire, I guess you’d like that kind of thing.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “You’re something, you know?”

  I scowled at him as we continued to walk.

  At the end of the hallway there was a door that was different to all the rest. This one opened easily with a regular doorknob, and wasn’t locked behind us. I made a mental note of that.

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “You’re not getting out of here.”

  “What are you, a freaking mind reader?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer.

  “Let’s just say I know how teenage girls think.”

  “That’s not disturbing at all.” I deadpanned.

  We stepped into the room; a large, cavernous cellar lined with long, skinny racks full of wine bottles. The red wine bottles looked like they could have been full of blood. I didn’t want to think about that, though. We walked through the wine stacks when I got an idea. I sure as fuck didn’t want to meet this Caleb dude and get murdered, so it was time to do something drastic.

  “Ow!” I groaned, doubling over, using my free hand to steady myself on a waist–high rack of bottles.

  “What’s wrong?” Impatience and concern mixed into one. Ryan released my other hand and I pressed it to my stomach, my hand cold, almost missing the heat in his touch. Almost.

  “It hurts,” I gasped, wincing and gesturing to my midsection. “Oh, god!”

  My fingers closed around the neck of a wine bottle covered in dust. In one snap of my wrist, I brought the bottle up in a wide arc, where it connected with Ryan’s temple.

  Only it didn’t. It stopped just shy of his face, an iron claw latching onto my wrist. “Put it back,” he said through gritted teeth, gesturing to the rack with an angry nod. I loosened my grip and the bottle slipped from my fingers, the floor rushing up to smash it to pieces.

  And he caught it, faster than my eyes could comprehend. The bastard caught it in midair.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about the boy who cried wolf?” His eyes drilled into mine.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you she wished she’d aborted you?” I shot back at him.

  He just smiled that cold, unaffected smile. “You know, I like you. I might just keep you after Caleb’s finished.” For someone who said they liked me, he sure didn’t seem to be liking this. Whatever this was. His jaw strained under the pressure of his clenched teeth, and I wondered how much further I’d need to push him before he snapped… or just snapped my neck.

  “I hate you,” I spat. “I’ll kill you, I swear to God.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  Ryan placed the undamaged bottle back in its spot and grabbed both of my wrists from behind, frogmarching me forward like a handcuffed inmate.

  The air turned colder, if that was even possible. I shivered in my dirty jeans and flimsy camisole. It was ridiculous – I didn’t want to see what was on the other side of these shelves. I would have gladly held on to Ryan’s leg and begged him to take me back to my room and lock me in there, if I thought he’d listen With each bare foot I placed in front of the other, the feeling of disquiet that banded around my chest got louder and tighter, until I could barely breathe. A steady thrumming noise invaded my head, getting louder and more intense the further I got into the room, and I frowned.

  We stepped out of the rows of shelves, not to the gruesome sight I had expected, but into a space with an overstuffed black leather couch and two matching recliners, a coffee table on a Turkish rug in the middle of it all. It looked like a living room, not a torture chamber. Only, on the coffee table there was a large mason jar, lid screwed on tight, with what appeared to be a human heart sitting inside.

  I swallowed back my truck-stop sandwich and tried not to think about it.

  There was a huge bay window at the far end of the room that let light pour into the space. I hadn’t seen the sun in so many days, I practically rushed forward out of the shadows.

  And facing that bay window, looking away from us, was the man I would soon know as Caleb.

  The first vampire that had ever been created.

  His name, he later told me, meant ‘The Chosen One’, because a demon had chosen him alone to carry the vampire virus into humanity.

  I held my breath in terror as he turned from the window, looked into my eyes, and smiled. In every other respect he looked like a normal man. But his dark eyes – a deep, chestnut brown ringed with flecks of orange, just like the faint gold flecks around Ryan’s eyes, only much brighter—the eyes were what set him apart. They were beautiful and terrifying all at once. He blinked, and those same luminous eyes turned pure black, like his pupils had swallowed all of the light in the world.

  When they turned solid black, I gasped. I tried to back up, but all I did was press up against Ryan’s chest. I debated turning to run, but I knew I wouldn’t make it an inch before they pounced on me.

  I’d only ever felt that way once in my life. Hiking in the woods, I’d seen a mountain lion once. The casual way it sized me up, the urge inside me to flee, the way I had to force myself to stand my ground – because you couldn’t let yourself flee and trigger the lion’s instinct to chase you down and devour you – and soon enough, the lion lost interest in me altogether.

  I didn’t hike alone again after that.

  Standing between Ryan and Caleb, the man who had snatched me in the night and the man who had sent him, it wasn’t any easier to quash that flee instinct. The voice inside me screamed. She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. Being surrounded by lions, though—that quelled the urge. Because where would I go? Straight into their waiting embrace.

  I stood my ground. It killed me inside to resist the flee impulse.

  “Mia” he said pleasantly, allowing his true age to seep into the echo of his words. “I’m Caleb. It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  The pounding. It reverberated inside my skull, reaching fever pitch, and I felt sweat starting to collect at my temples. What the hell was that noise?

  Caleb stepped forward and held out a hand in greeting. Those eyes, Jesus, they were so black and so big, you could lose a lifetime inside of them and not even notice. And it wasn’t just the eyes that were terrifying. I had noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned instinctively towards it, only for my eyes to land upon the heart in the jar.

  It was moving. It was beating. It was the pounding noise that was getting louder with each passing minute.

  I put a hand to my mouth and stifled a scream.

  Ryan dug a finger into my back and I shot my hand out instinctively, where Caleb grasped it much too gently – with affection, even. His hand was hot, much hotter than mine or even Ryan’s. It was large and smooth and reminded me of my father’s hands. I wondered if his hands had been the ones to rip that beating heart from the chest of whomever it belonged to.

  It was beating. How was it beating? How was it fucking beating?

  The black eyes. The hot hands. The blood. The heart that moved of it’s own accord. Suddenly vampires didn’t seem like something make-believe. Vampires sounded very, very much like what was going on right now.

  Caleb tilted his head to the side, taking in my face, my body, and seemed to like what he saw. A slow grin spread across his tanned face, showing regular, straight teeth. His canines looked pretty sharp, but certainly nothing like what I had seen in horror movies. And yet, I had never been so terrified in my entire life. The eyes. I wanted him to go back to his regular eyes. You know, the ones that had whites and a pupil, instead of a solid film of black.

  “Sit.”

  Ryan tugged me to the side, pressing me into one of the overstuffed single recliners. Thank God for small mercies—I didn’t want anyone sitting next to me. Caleb perched on the coffee table directly in front of me. Man, have you ever heard of personal space?

  “Your eyes,” I said involuntarily. I was about to lose my shit and start screaming until someb
ody knocked me out.

  He smiled, blinked, and just like that his eyes went back to normal. I sagged a little, relieved.

  “You can go now,” he addressed Ryan, without tearing his gaze from me.

  My heart sank as I heard Ryan’s footsteps fade into the distance, then the thud of the door. He might be an asshole, but somehow, I had a feeling he wasn’t nearly as bad as Caleb.

  I studied Caleb’s face with a mixture of revulsion and wonder. He appeared to be in his late thirties, with smooth, tanned skin that stretched over attractively angular features and a wide, arrogant mouth that seemed to delight at my terror. A face that was old in experience, but still retained the patina of youth. All topped off with a mop of dark brown curls that added an ironic, boyish charm to his terrifying demeanour.

  “Where are we?” I asked when I could bear the silence no longer.

  “We are in my house.”

  “Where is your house?”

  He gestured to the open window. “Take a look for yourself.”

  I took the chance to put distance between us, edging out from his gaze and tentatively stepping towards the window.

  It was breathtaking – like someone had painted a picture of paradise and stuck it to the window frame. We were at least two floors above the ground, overlooking lush, green forest. In the background, three snow–capped mountains rose from the earth. Between the forest and the building I stood in, a massive, cerulean blue lake stretched out further than my eyes could follow.

  My breath caught in my throat as a voice sounded out directly behind me.

  “It’s a beautiful place.”

  I spun around to find Caleb had soundlessly moved across the polished concrete floor, and now stood inches from me. I cowered, pressing my back against the thick glass that separated me from my freedom.