[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  He carried me into the woods, and I could hear the others following closely behind.

  "She's a fighter," said the one holding me. "Maybe we ought to knock her out."

  The blood drained from my face. How were they planning on doing that?

  "What, you can't handle a little girl?" Adam snarled. "Vampire up, Luke."

  He readjusted his hold on me and squeezed harder. It was becoming harder to breathe.

  We traveled through the woods for a while before Adam ordered me chained to a tree.

  "Which tree?" asked Luke, the vampire holding me.

  "I was warned that you're an idiot," Adam sighed. "Just tie her to a tree."

  He held me down against a tree while the other two vampires tied me up very tightly with a very long chain.

  "That's a solid steel chain," Adam said. "Don't think for a second that we'd be stupid enough to tie you up with something that you could escape from. We will be back shortly, so just stay put."

  "I can go through walls," I told him. "You seriously expect me to believe that I can't go through a little chain?"

  "Didn't anyone tell you that vampires can't pass through solid steel?" Luke asked, looking at me like I was a fool.

  "I don't believe you."

  "Vampires have never been able to pass through solid steel," Luke yelled. "There was a curse placed on the first vampires by some witch. The curse has been passed to all vampires."

  "Shut up, Luke," Adam said, rolling his eyes. "You don't need to explain anything to her, she's our prisoner. Come on."

  They walked away, talking in hushed tones about their plans for me over the next few days before handing me over. Then they were too far away for me to hear them.

  I listened for noises of any other predators, but didn't hear anything that concerned me. I sighed and tried to squirm out of the chains. They were crazy tight. I tried to go through them like I would go through a wall, but they were right. I couldn't do it.

  I did manage to get my arms a little bit loose, but could do nothing more than get my hands to my lap and move them to my sides—with a lot of work.

  My thoughts wandered to my family, and I wondered how long it would take them to notice that I was missing. When I didn't show up for dinner, they would probably just think that I was being irresponsible.

  I knew that Clara, Brooke, and Steve would probably figure out what was going on. I hoped that they wouldn't think that I had run off with Tanner, since our cars were both at the coffee shop. If they thought so, it would be a while before they began searching for me.

  I saw a stick next to me within my reach. I wrestled my arm over to grab it, and I looked it over. If I could sharpen the end, it would make a perfect stake. I didn't have anything else to do, so I used my very strong nails to shape the end until it was very sharp.

  I set it next to me and pushed it underneath my leg. I hoped to be able to grab it quickly and unnoticed when they unchained me. Sneaking it under my clothes was going to be the challenging part.

  I watched as it got darker and darker, and I began to wonder if their plan to weaken me was to leave me chained to this tree. It didn't seem very smart to do that, because my car was parked not too far from the woods.

  With nothing better to do, I decided to see if it was possible to get the stake under my clothes while I waited. I bent my knees and thought that I could possibly get it into my socks. Luckily, my outfit of the day included stretchy leggings under a dress. If I'd been wearing jeans, it would have been impossible.

  With such limited mobility, it took a lot of maneuvering, but I was able to get it into my sock. I was grateful that I was so flexible. It was still a lot of work, but I had plenty of time and it was completely dark by the time that I had finished.

  My stomach roared with hunger, and I hoped that I would be able to eat soon. The coffee from earlier was not going to last long, and I hadn't eaten much for lunch.

  On top of being hungry, I was also getting bored, and I wanted out of the chains. I tried again to squirm out of them but they barely had any give.

  I tried again to move through them as if they were a wall, ignoring what they had told me about me being unable to go through them. I was royalty, so I had more powers than they did. They could also have told me that so that I wouldn't try to escape or because I might not be able to if I merely thought that I couldn't.

  After that didn't work after about fifty tries, I tried to think of another way out of the chains. I could go through wood, so could I possibly go through the tree, and somehow get out of the chain that way? It was definitely worth a try.

  I imagined myself standing in the middle of the trunk of the tree. I visualized it until I could feel myself standing inside of the tree. I opened my eyes, and saw that I was still chained to the tree but I was standing instead of sitting.

  I sighed, and tried to think of another way out of the chains. My stomach was yelling at me, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to focus.

  Footsteps. They were finally coming back, and it sounded like they were about a mile away. I tried to sit back down because they would surely notice that they left me sitting, and I was standing when they got back.

  I tried to force myself and the chains down, but the chains were not budging. I would just have to tell them that they were losing their minds. It would be fun to mess with my captors.

  "Wasn't she sitting when we left her?" one vampire asked when they made it back to me.

  "Obviously we left her standing, stupid," said another. "She couldn't have budged in those chains."

  "I know that I tied her up sitting," Luke said.

  "Just untie her," Adam ordered. "I don't keep you around to hear what you think."

  He untied me, and one of them blindfolded me.

  "Hey!" Someone picked me up, and I fought and squirmed only to be held so tight that it was difficult to breathe.

  Why hadn't I had someone tell me what kind of powers and gifts I had? If I had some sort of idea what to expect, I would have been a lot more prepared to deal with these vampires. As it was, I had figured out most of my powers by accident.

  I was thrown into some kind of car. At least they had the decency to throw me onto a seat so that I didn't land on the hard floor. As we drove, I tried to see if I could tell what direction we were going so that I would have some vague idea of where I was when we got there. It was obvious that they did not want me to know where that was.

  "What are you planning on doing to me?" I demanded.

  "We already told you. We're going to weaken you and hand you over to the Morettis."

  "What are you going to do to weaken me?"

  "You will find out soon enough."

  "What are you going to do with Tanner?"

  "Stop talking."

  "I want to know what you are going to do with him. Are you going to let him go once you've handed me over to the Morettis?"

  "You talk too much."

  "Are you going to let him go?" I demanded.

  "It's up to Samantha what she does with him. We will let her know when you are with the Morettis, and then she's free to let him go or if she's already taken care of him, then that's that."

  "You should let him go. He didn't do anything to anyone."

  "We aren't concerned with insignificant humans."

  "He's not insignificant. He's a good person."

  "We don't care about mortals. They're nothing more than food to us."

  "Have you forgotten your own humanity?" I asked in disgust.

  "I've been a vampire for over fifty years. I can barely remember my human life."

  "What about your family? Your friends?" I asked. "Don't you remember what they meant to you?"

  "I was so hungry for blood that I killed most of them off myself."

  "Uh!" I exclaimed. "Tell me you're joking."

  "Welcome to the world of being turned against your will. It's not neat and pretty like being born a vampire princess. The stories that we could tell you would
make your skin crawl."

  "Killing your family is horrible. How do you live with yourself?"

  Something hit my head, and I lost consciousness.

  The first thing that I noticed as I started to wake up was a strange smell. I hadn't opened my eyes yet, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to. Images of being captured flashed through my mind's eye, and I was sure that I didn't want to know what the smell was.

  I tried to gain a sense of my surroundings before opening my eyes. I wanted to be ready for whatever I would need to be ready for. I was lying down and sensed that I was in a room and out of the moving vehicle.

  Aside from the strange unidentified scent, I could also smell hay and must. The air was cool, not that I was bothered by it. I could hear a dripping sound and small critters not too far away. I couldn't hear any of the vampires who had taken me.

  I opened my right eye just a crack and could see that I was in a room made of stone that was fairly bare. I opened my eye a little more and decided that nobody was in the room with me, so I opened both of them.

  I was lying almost directly on the stone floor except for a small amount of hay underneath me. There was an unused fireplace off to the side and a couple of chairs across from it.

  I sat up and my arms jerked back. There were shackles chained to each of my wrists. I sighed and scooted back against the cool wall so that I could sit upright.

  The sound of the chains must have alerted the other vampires that I was awake, because I heard the noise of a lock being opened and the scraping of the huge and heavy metal door opening on the stone floor.

  "Well, well. Sleeping beauty finally arises," laughed Luke, entering the room with another vampire.

  "You've been out a while," the other vampire said. "You must have been pretty tired."

  "Or you hit her too hard, you idiot," Luke said. "Adam is going to be pissed that we haven't been able to work on her yet. He's going to be back soon."

  "Work on me? What do you think that you're going to do to me?"

  "We need to make you weak and agreeable. That way we can hand you over to the Morettis without any problem," the second one told me.

  "Why do I need to be weak and agreeable? You don't think that the Morettis could handle me if I weren't?"

  "Adam doesn't want you fighting or trying anything. The exchange has to go quickly, quietly and smoothly," he replied.

  "Why are you telling her all of this? The more she knows, the more that she will have to use against us."

  "It doesn't matter because she'll be weak and agreeable."

  "Are you guys the two stooges or something?" I asked.

  Luke was in my face in a split second. "Do not think that we are not a force to be reckoned with. Do you understand me?"

  "You tell her."

  He turned to the other and growled, "Shut up, Danny."

  I tried to stifle a smile. These two were a lot more humorous than they were scary.

  Luke whipped back around to me. "You think this is funny?"

  I gulped down a laugh and said, "Nope."

  He took a deep breath. "You still have some of your humanity left. Don't think for a moment that I won't drink your blood. I will bite into your neck in a second."

  I tried to hide the fear that radiated through me, but I knew that as a vampire he could probably smell my fear.

  He smirked. "That's better. Now listen up. You've been out for almost a day, so I'm sure you're hungry. You're not getting any food, so don't even think about asking. You can have water because we can't let you die. But you don't get anything else."

  "Is that the big plan to weaken me?" I asked.

  "No, that's just part of it," Danny told me. "Adam is bringing a witch because he wants to cast some spells on you."

  That sounded serious, and I wanted to find a way out of this place before I found out what kinds of spells were planned.

  "You guys will never get away with this. I am the Sonnast, descended directly from the Fyrsturae. Whether I live or die, you will pay, Luke and Danny."

  Danny grabbed my neck. "Don't even think about threatening me. You are nothing. You've grown up as a human, not knowing anything about vampire life. Do you really think that they would put you in charge of all vampires? Consider that."

  "Of course they will." I glared at him. "Don't try to make me question that. I'm the rightful heir, and the fact that I was kidnapped has nothing to do with whether or not I will be on the throne. Rest assured I will be. The fact that my death was ordered by the Morettis, and now you have gone as far as to capture me, shows just how important I am to the future of the royal line."

  "If you're so valuable, then why hasn't anybody broke down the doors to rescue you?" Luke asked.

  "They probably have no idea where I am. It's not like you sent out invitations."

  Luke snickered. "You've got a sense of humor even though your life is about to end. I'll have to remember that for your eulogy."

  I glared at him. "I wasn't trying to be funny."

  "I like 'em feisty." Luke licked his lips.

  I jumped toward him, but was yanked back by the chains. He laughed at me, and I vowed to myself to find a way out of this place and to rid the world of all of them.

  "Keep control of yourself, your highness," Danny whispered in my ear. "No matter how much you want us, you can't have us."

  I jumped at him, and because he was so close, I was able to knock him over. Although that was not what I was trying to do, I was glad to do it.

  He landed on his butt, jumped up as quickly as he landed and grabbed my face and squeezed hard. "Don't try that again."

  I spit in his face.

  He grabbed me and slammed me into the rock hard wall. My head hit, and it sounded like a melon landing on the floor. My vision went double, and two Dannys got right up to my face, so close that I could smell fishy breath. I tried not to gag.

  "Do you have a death wish?" the Dannys asked.

  "I thought that I was going to die anyway. Isn't that what you told me?"

  "I have the power to make it easy or miserable for you. I can make your last days more comfortable or more terrifying."

  "You're already starving me and have me chained to a wall in this cold, smelly dungeon of a room. You're obviously not doing very much to keep me comfortable."

  "I could do a lot more to make you uncomfortable." He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me to the ground.

  I landed with a thud and small pieces of hay and black dust flew around me.

  "We'll be back," he warned, and they left the room, locking the door between us.

  I sat up and rubbed the sore spot on the back of my head. A lump was already starting to form, and it was incredibly tender.

  I noticed that strange smell again. It seemed to be coming from the little pile of hay that I was on. I started digging around the hay and found a lot more of that black dust underneath.

  The further I went from the center of the hay, the stronger the smell became. When I had gone as far as the chains would allow, I was almost to the edge of the hay. I dug around and came upon something hard. I pulled it out and discovered that it was a bone.

  I knew that it wasn't there for any dogs to chew on. I looked at it more closely and recognized it as a human arm bone. It could have been vampire for all I knew. I doubted vampire bones were any different from human ones. Whoever had been killed in here had been dead a long time because the bone was very dry.

  I dropped the bone and dug around some more, and found that the black dust became more of a sludge the further down that I went. I pulled my hand out and it was covered in black goo. My stomach lurched and twisted.

  What was that? It wasn't like anything that I had learned about in my CSI club.

  Whatever it was, it started to make my hand tingle. I wiped my hand furiously on the hay to get it off. My hand began to go numb.

  I threw up.

  22

  I sat on the edge of the hay as far away from the black goo as possible and
tried as hard as I could to not think about what it might have been. I had managed to get it all off my hand, and the feeling had returned to normal.

  I had managed to calm down since throwing up, but I wanted out of the horrible room I was in more than ever. I knew that I had killed that farmer not too long ago, but that was different. He was an evil person, and I had been quick and painless. I got a feeling when holding the bone, and when the black mush was on my fingers, that the person had suffered greatly.

  I decided to focus on the chains and finding a way out of them. That was the first order of business before getting out of this place. I was certain that the walls weren't solid steel, so I could get through them if I had to.

  Closing my eyes, I imagined myself outside of the chains. I pictured my wrists going through the shackles with ease. When I had imagined it to the point that it felt completely real, I opened my eyes and looked at my wrists.

  I was still in the shackles. I tried the process several more times with no more luck.

  I glared at the shackles and said in exasperation, "Just get off my wrists already."

  They fell to the ground, landing softly on the hay.

  My mouth popped open, and I stared at the chains in complete disbelief. I grabbed them, snapped them on again and ordered, "Get off my wrists."

  They dropped to the ground again, and I smiled.

  "At least I learn new skills as I need them," I murmured to myself. "I'm going to need to learn a lot, quickly."

  I heard footsteps, and I grabbed the shackles and snapped them back on. I wasn't ready to surprise them with that yet.

  The big loud door opened slowly, and Adam walked in with a lady dressed in black.

  "How are you feeling?" Adam asked, smirking.

  I didn't give him an answer.

  He looked at my pile of vomit and said, "Looks like you're doing even worse than I had hoped for. Perfect."

  "Maybe I won't need to perform as many spells for you," the lady said.