Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  “What are you doing to me?” I cried out.

  “Just try to relax,” Ryan said, in a voice that sounded less kind than his face looked.

  “Please,” I begged, hating myself for being weak. “Just tell me what you’re doing!”

  “There’s a needle tapped into the base of your skull,” Ryan explained.

  “Why?!” I moaned.

  I got no answer. Ryan stood in front of me and watched as someone behind me injected three more lots of the burning stuff into the tap in my skull. Each time I screamed.

  “Tell us your name,” Ryan asked, in a voice that suggested he had done this many times before.

  “Fuck. You.” I replied.

  “Go again,” he said to whoever was behind me.

  I gasped and held my breath, waiting for the burning pain to pass.

  “What’s your name?” Ryan asked again, and dread filled my stomach like cubes of frozen ice. He was prodding me with a knife. A big, sharp hunting knife.

  “Mia,” I whispered.

  “Louder!” he demanded, pressing the blade against my ribcage.

  “Mia Blake!” I yelled at him, choking after the sudden exertion.

  “Give her more,” he said tonelessly.

  Each time I repeated my name, the needle went back in, and the burning fire spread through my skull and across my veins hotter every time.

  “What’s your name?” Ryan asked. I stared at the floor.

  “Hey!” he jerked the chains, sending pain shooting through my shoulder. I choked. “I can’t remember,” I wheezed.

  He frowned. “Are you sure?” I nodded, panting despite the cold chill in the room. It must be nighttime, I thought. I am going to die tonight.

  I watched as Ford pushed Ryan aside. In his hand, he held a gun. Ryan – looking rather reluctant – swapped places, and I guessed that it was his turn to play nurse with the needle. Ford pressed the barrel of the gun up under my chin and sneered.

  “If you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to find Jared and rip his heart out,” he hissed, squeezing my throat with his free hand.

  “Don’t you hurt him!” I spluttered. “Stay away from him!”

  “Liar,” he muttered, striking my face with the side of his gun. I felt a crunch as my cheekbone all but shattered, and I momentarily lost vision in my left eye. I’m going to die here, alone.

  I don’t want to die.

  He tugged on the chains and my shoulder grated painfully. “I didn’t hear that name?” he prompted as metal bit into my flesh.

  “Mia,” I gasped, “you motherfucker.”

  My anger didn’t faze him in the slightest. On the contrary, it amused him.

  “Swearing doesn’t suit you, babe,” he said, and nodded to Ryan. I winced in anticipation as he pushed the plunger again, sending the burning liquid into my veins.

  “Mother. Fucker!” I repeated as the stuff coursed through me. The agonizing pain was enough to make me cry, and since I no longer cared about maintaining my pride, I gave in to the desire, scrunching my face up and letting the tears flow.

  “Name?”

  “Bite me,” I mumbled.

  “I’d love to,” Ford replied, sounding bored. “But you don’t belong to me, baby. You belong to Caleb, now.”

  I gritted my teeth as another wave of fire and ice entered my veins, and the familiar roaring sound in my head drowned everything else out. A pair of teeth nibbled at my ear, and a voice that sounded like honey whispered to me to let it all go. The suggestion only made me fight harder.

  It went on for what seemed like hours. Each time the liquid passed through me, it felt like everything I had ever known was being washed away into nothingness. It was almost as if it would be easier if I just let it all fade away, forgot who I was, become a shadow. But something deep inside my gut clenched each time I felt like letting go, and it wouldn’t let everything fade to gray. I lost count at twenty. Twenty injections and more. I no longer had the energy to say my own name aloud, so I repeated it to myself instead. Mia Blake. Jared Cohen. Evie Montgomery. Blairstown, New Jersey. I was starting to lose touch with reality, but I clung to my memories fiercely. I had heard of drugs that wiped memories before, and I was terrified the painful liquid was eating away at my soul like battery acid on bare flesh.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they stopped. I barely registered what was happening, other than the sound of the syringe dropping onto the stainless steel trolley, where it clanged and rolled to a stop. The three vampires spoke in hushed voices.

  “Too much?”

  “Show the boss.”

  “Stubborn bitch.”

  I heard a door open, and breathed a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve. It slammed shut, and I closed my exhausted eyes. But I was not alone.

  Ryan stood before me, his smooth face pinched with – worry?

  “Please,” I said before I could stop the words. I hated pleading, it made me look even weaker. But I couldn’t take one more shot of the burning stuff. I just couldn’t do it, and he knew it.

  He brushed a stray hair from my face, tucking it behind my chewed ear. “What are you?” he mused, and my heart thudded wildly. “Why won't this work on you? It should have killed you by now.”

  “I know you don’t believe me,” he murmured, his brown eyes full of something. Pity? Regret? “But just – just hang in there, okay? It’ll all be over soon.”

  Hang in there. Ha ha.

  I felt pressure tugging at my wrists and all of a sudden, I was falling through the air. I cried out as my knees slammed onto the unforgiving floor. I was cold, so cold despite the relatively warm temperature of the room. I crawled over to the pile of blankets Kate had once inhabited, shivering violently. I rummaged through the pile in a stupor, hardly seeing what I was doing, when my fingers closed around something hard and rough. I tentatively pulled and the object came free from the pile of material – a splintered piece of wood, sharpened at one end and possibly broken off the plywood board that covered the window.

  A stake.

  Excitedly, I felt through the blankets for more weapons. I found one more crudely fashioned stake and a dark green hoodie that might have belonged to Kate. I wrapped the stakes tightly in one of the blankets and clutched it to me as I lay down on the cool limestone floor. I rolled into a ball on my side and touched the back of my neck gingerly, feeling a hard lump where the tap had been. I had no recollection of it being taken out, and for that I was grateful. I closed my wet eyes, unable to stay conscious for even a minute longer.

  And this time, when the darkness closed in, I surrendered willingly.

  ELEVEN

  More time passed. I had no concept of how long, but I guessed it felt longer than it really was. Every time I felt like giving up, like surrendering myself, like forgetting, I searched myself for every piece of anger I could muster up, and I held onto it all like a hot ball of hate to fling at my kidnappers.

  And in amongst all of that seething rage, I dreamed of Jared. I dreamed of my mother.

  Hours (days?) passed, and I heard a key thunk in the door. My stomach rumbled as I heaved myself off the floor and onto my feet. I hated being vulnerable on the floor, so even though I could barely stand, I chose to be stubborn and leaned against the wall.

  Caleb appeared in the doorway. I was surprised; I’d only seen him in the room once in all this time, and that was when he was murdering my roomie. He shut the door firmly behind him, and surveyed me curiously.

  “How do you feel today?” he asked, without a trace of the anger or the black eyes I’d witnessed the day before. A hundred possible caustic comments presented themselves, but I didn’t answer him. He took three steps and was close enough for me to reach out and punch him. So I did. But my fist was clumsy and barely connected with his face. I think it hurt my hand more than it hurt him.

  So you could say that I had it coming when he drew his fist back and slammed it into my cheek, so hard that I swear he almost took my head off.

>   He smiled as I groaned and clutched my face. “Today is an angry day,” he observed, with obvious amusement. “I like those so much better than crying days.”

  “I'm a person!” I yelled, glaring at him. “Do you get that? I'm not just a personal blood supply for you!”

  His response shocked me. “I know,” he said matter–of–factly. “And if it makes a difference, I'm sorry for what's happened to you.”

  I straightened in surprise and looked him in his freaky eyes as he started to pace the length of my tiny dungeon room. “If you're really sorry you'll let me go. Please. Just let me go home.”

  He laughed. “You know I can't do that. If I let you go home, you would ruin everything I’ve started here. All my hard work, gone because of one silly girl?”

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I begged.

  “Yes, you will. I let a girl go once. She ran straight home and told everyone about the vampires. The hunters came for us in their hundreds. They gunned us down until we were almost extinct.” His eyes grew dark. “If you ever go home, I’ll be right there, little girl. I’ll be killing your big strong boyfriend Jared before he can even take a breath. Then I’ll eat your mother, and the little blonde girl, too.”

  “Then kill me!” I said angrily. “Because you can't make me forget who I am!”

  “It will be over for you soon enough,” he replied indifferently, pausing his pacing in front of me. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a pressed white handkerchief, offering it to me. “Here. Clean yourself up.”

  I looked at the napkin in disgust and gathered all of the blood and saliva in my mouth, spitting it as forcefully as I could at him. It landed on his cheek and made a red trail down his face.

  I immediately realized what a colossal mistake that was. I had just spit a mouthful of blood at a vampire.

  Suddenly, it felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room, and I backed up against the wall with my hands held out in front of me.

  “Wait -” I cried out–

  “You shouldn't have done that,” he growled, as he pinned me against the wall. I kicked and screamed as teeth ripped into my neck and my blood was hungrily, ragefully taken by force.

  I had never really believed in the concept of people having a soul until the first time a vampire bit me. I hadn’t really thought about it at all, to be honest. When my dad died, that was it, as far as I was concerned. No afterlife. No heaven or hell. Just birth, life, and death. But when Caleb started to take my blood, he was taking something else along with it. It’s hard to put into words, but it was like he was dragging pieces of my soul out along with my blood. Taking every ounce of energy within me, so that I was frozen, unable to speak or breathe or even think straight. Invisible fingers probed inside my chest, constricted my throat, twisted the chunk of meat inside my skull until it buzzed and screamed in agony.

  I stopped fighting back almost immediately. I mean, it had only been a couple of days since dramatic–blood–loss–episode number one, and I very much doubted my body was anywhere near better when Caleb bit me. Besides, the word ‘bit’ sounds too nice, too neat. In reality, it was like a rabid dog had latched onto my neck and proceeded to rip my shoulder apart.

  I wanted to throw up, but I was frozen. He sucked greedily, again and again. The black dots that floated in front of my eyes said Too much. I was on the verge of blacking out when I was tossed to the floor like a rag doll.

  I scurried backwards on my hands and heels, one hand pressed to my bleeding neck. I tilted my gaze so that I was looking up into the face of my attacker.

  “When are you going to kill me?” I whispered to him.

  He stared at me like one might stare at a cockroach twitching on the floor.

  “Ryan!” he barked. Ryan appeared at his side. He must have been waiting in the hallway. His face remained blank.

  “Sir?”

  “Take this one back to your room.” He gave me another withering glare. “Let her sleep this off. Transfuse her, let her recover before we attempt the Turn. And Ryan?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Strap this bitch down. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Of course.”

  And with that, Caleb left. Ryan wordlessly hoisted me up, throwing my sore arm over his shoulders. I moaned.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, gently disentangling himself from that side of my body and using my good arm instead.

  “Wait!” I said. I grabbed my bundled up blanket, knowing that there was a crudely fashioned stake from the broken window frame hidden in its folds. I clutched it to my chest as we left the room, not really knowing why I’d taken it, but feeling like it might be the last hope I had left.

  Draped over Ryan’s shoulder, I stumbled blindly next to him as we made our way up the hallway, in the opposite direction of Caleb’s lair. It took ages to get to Ryan’s room, especially when we had to navigate stairwells, lifts and even more impossibly long hallways. I had thought I’d had no idea where I was before, but now I was completely and utterly lost. We went up several flights of stairs, so I guessed we were somewhere high. Finally, though, we reached a large wooden door at the end of a long limestone corridor. Ryan disentangled himself from me, and I leaned on the cool wall for support. In theory, I could have run – I was completely unrestrained and Ryan was fumbling with a brass key – but I had nothing left inside of me. No energy, no fight, not even any hope except that the end was approaching quickly, and so I didn’t resist when Ryan took my wrist in his hand and led me through the open door.

  I didn’t notice much of the room in my state of exhaustion. I just remember the feeling of a cool, damp breeze on my skin, despite the fact that we were deep inside Caleb’s building and there were no windows in view.

  My head wobbled on my shoulders as I was led through a minimally decorated living room, then through a kitchen that was all stainless steel and dark marble. I stopped in my zombified state, looking around the kitchen in drunken wonder.

  “You eat?” I asked, gaping at a package of bright red tomatoes on the counter.

  Ryan smiled (what a change from yelling and putting taps in my brain) and nodded. “Yes, I eat.”

  “But you’re a vampire,” I insisted groggily, rubbing my eyes like a little kid.

  That made him laugh, but this time, there was no trace of malevolence lingering in his voice. He just sounded like a regular guy. “Now you believe in vampires?” he asked.

  “I just got my throat ripped out,” I said morosely. “I’m a believer.”

  “Come on.” He tugged my wrist and I followed in a bloodless stupor. We entered a small bedroom that actually looked to be the same dimensions and shape as my dungeon – even the door for the attached ensuite was in the same place, but this room had chocolate colored walls, an oak dresser and a matching four poster oak bed that seemed to take up every inch of spare space. Next to the bed was an IV stand hung with a bag of blood, condensation gleaming on the plastic package. When I saw it I froze, remembering the torture device I’d been hooked up to.

  He must have felt me stiffen, and he immediately guessed what I was staring at.

  “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “It’s just to make you feel better.”

  “Better?” I said incredulously. “Aren’t you just going to kill me?”

  We shared an uncomfortable silence as he tried to answer my question.

  “Look,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re here or what’s going to happen.”

  “He’s going to kill me,” I said flatly.

  “Nobody is going to kill you,” he said firmly. “Honestly, I don’t lie. There’s no point me giving you false hope.”

  “He won’t let me go,” I insisted.

  He looked at the floor. “No, probably not.”

  “I wish he would just kill me already,” I said miserably.

  He laid me gently on his bed, carefully avoiding my neck, and arranged the blankets around me. I held
tightly onto the blanket I’d carried with me, the one that contained my crudely fashioned wooden stake – and my last shot at freedom.

  “I need to put this IV in,” he said apologetically. I looked away, barely registering the tiny prick as the needle entered a fresh vein in my arm.

  “Sleep now,” he said, still with that persuasive tone, but gentler. I obeyed, settling back on the pillow, firmly clutching my blanket. Ryan sat in a plush leather chair beside the bed, fidgeting with the IV blood bag, and then the plastic tubing, until there was nothing left to fuss with.

  I lay there for what seemed like ages, waiting for Ryan to relax beside me. Finally, I couldn't wait any longer. I shifted and felt him tense beside me immediately. Shit. This could take me a while. I thought of all the things a normal sleeping person would do. I sighed, I rolled over, I shifted, I even threw in a couple of snores for effect. My right hand reached into my blanket and curled around a splintered piece of wood I had fashioned into a crude stake by rubbing it along the concrete floor in my cell. It was now or never.

  I cracked open one eye and saw Ryan, engrossed in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. How fitting. I would have made a dig about a vampire reading a Stephen King book, but since I was about to kill him, it would have to wait until he was staked.

  I drew a deep breath, opened both eyes, sat bolt upright in bed and struck out with my stake.

  I don't know who was more surprised – me or him. Him, at the fact that he had just been taken down by a girl, or me, that I had managed to get the stake into his chest without getting punched in the face.

  He gasped, looking down at his chest. “You ... Bitch,” he said angrily, clearly still dazzled by my wicked stabbing skills. I had hurt him, sure, but I didn't think the stake was in far enough or at the right angle to kill him. Which meant time to fucking run. He opened his mouth to yell out, but a pathetic little cough came out instead.

  I threw the covers off and stood clumsily, backing towards the door. It was disgustingly satisfying to watch Ryan writhe in pain as he tried to pull the stake out of his chest. I couldn't believe I had missed his damned heart at such close range.