Little by little, the few people in attendance filtered away from the midway. Madison could only imagine the thoughts running through their heads: hot coco and flannel pajamas, a blanket on the couch, and Netflix. The simple things. She craved an identical escape, but the truth was, something so comforting and normal would always be out of reach.
As rides and games shut down, the carnies working them disappeared.
They would stare at her as they walked away, never breaking eye contact as they rounded a corner and vanished into the darkness. They had to have a plan to meet up somewhere. The vampire army was gathering, planning. Fourteen against one.
She scared them.
She hoped she scared them. At the very least, she hoped her presence, her persistence unnerved them. They probably knew about her grandmother. Richelle and Seamus never said which bloodline had been responsible for her grandmother’s death. She wished she’d asked. When they were at the park, it was all too much to think straight; she didn’t comprehend then what she knew now, or else she would have asked.
Walking along the back end of the carnival, the trailers to her right, she sensed something she had missed before, earlier.
Smelled it.
Heard it.
How could it have gotten by her before?
“Madison Young.” The deep voice startled her.
Turning around, Madison was ready. She didn’t want to tip her hand too soon. Not reaching for the dagger took restraint, control. What helped her maintain composure was the fact that there were still normal people around. The carnival was not yet completely deserted. “Julius?”
The man laughed. “Ah, no,” he said. He let the sarcastic half smile remain. “We noticed you do not have the dagger with you.”
“It’s close.”
“We figured.”
“I’m not going to walk around with it in my hand. Police will have me in a cell in a heartbeat.”
“True. They would,” he said. “Julius just wants to make sure you bring it. When the carnival ends, you come back with the dagger. We’ll be meeting in the trees, back behind where the trailers are parked.”
“Isn’t that kind of close to the mall?”
“There’s a footpath. We’ll mark it. You won’t be able to miss it. It will take you about a quarter of a mile into the thin forest. That is where Julius will have your friend.”
“I don’t like that plan. It has easy ambush written all over it. Julius will grab the dagger and kill Neal and me in the blink of an eye,” Madison said. She turned on her other senses while she talked to the vampire. She worried someone or something might be sneaking up on her. She couldn’t sense any other vampires yet.
“That’s the plan. Non-negotiable.”
“So says your boss,” she said.
The vampire shrugged, his head tilted slightly to the side. “Half an hour, start down the path. Are we clear?”
“With the dagger.”
He held up a hand. “Correct. In a half hour, start down the path, bring the dagger. Are we clear?”
“Oh, I got it.”
“If you want some kettle corn, perhaps the last of the season, I suggest you head that way now. No charge, of course. Tonight we consider you something of an honored guest.”
“Oh, how privileged. I feel like trashy carnival royalty.”
The vampire was not amused by the insult, but neither did he appear offended. “We’re not fans of the cold. Laugh all you want. We stay close as a family and travel the states, never staying in any one location too long. The carnival has its privileges, I assure you.”
The vampire stared at her.
His eyes were brown. They swirled.
The tip of his tongue kept sliding over the point of his fangs.
His head was lowered, his chin toward his chest.
He was looking right at her, as if studying every line and pore on her face.
Madison turned and walked away. She had wanted to run, anything to get away from him faster, to escape his stare. Again she exercised restraint, and as much as running made sense, she walked taking deliberately slow calculated steps. Despite how much fear filled her, she was not going to let them know it.
Julius wanted to believe he was in control, and he might be. Madison wanted Julius’ vampires to question everything. If her actions secreted confidence, they’d be forced to consider that she, too, held some of the control, possessed some of the power.
As much as she wanted to look back to see what the vampire was doing, to see if he was still staring, she didn’t, and considered that a small victory.
Next, she went right up to the center kiosk and smiled at the woman working behind the Plexiglas. “An order of kettle corn,” she said.
Madison knew doing so would upset the vampires, that the suggestion was more of a mocking than a sincerity. This was exactly why she played along.
“Small, medium or–”
“Large.” Madison smiled, making no attempt to reach for money. She also had no interest in eating any of the popcorn. There was no denying how good it smelled though, and knew Neal would be in his glory with a bag of kettle corn.
The woman vampire handed over the bag. “Enjoy.”
The heat radiating from the bag of popcorn felt amazing on her hands. “Thank you. Hey, I’ll see you later.”
The vampire winked. “Count on it.”
Walking up and down the aisle of the midway, Madison noticed nearly every ride, every attraction, was shut down. The carnies were mostly gone. Perhaps they were taking up spots in trees tops along the trail. That seemed likely.
Madison stood by the funhouse. She saw a young couple, maybe in their early twenties, hold hands as they walked briskly away from the midway, and continued watching them until they went around the mall corner.
The last of the carnival lights shut off.
Someone laughed.
The laugh came from behind her and from beside her.
She could not see anyone.
This was all a game to them. Dropping the still full bag of kettle corn on the pavement, Madison tucked her hands into her coat pocket.
It had been a long day, but the waiting was just about over.
She stood still. She listened for sounds and smelled the air for whiffs of vampires nearby, as she continued to wait.
The dagger was with her. Always with her.
Julius might not have realized that.
She didn’t think anyone would stay back to watch her. They’d all be deep in the woods anxiously waiting for her.
That was what she wanted.
After another few minutes, Madison felt confident that she was alone. The spies were gone. She sniffed the air, knowing that in one of the trailers–not the one with the Bugatti bumper sticker–the vampires had people stashed.
She tried not to think about the kids she’d failed to save.
Now wasn’t the time.
She ran for the trailer, and at the back door closed her eyes and sniffed again.
Inside were people.
She gripped the door and yanked. The padlock held. She tugged at it, to no avail.
She didn’t see anything nearby to–a hammer lay across a control box to the kids mini-coaster ride. That was what she wanted. Picking it up, Madison swung it like a sledgehammer onto a railroad spike, and the padlock cracked in two.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Startled, Madison dropped the hammer. When she turned around, the woman vampire who had sold her the kettle corn hissed. There was less than three feet between them. What stood out the most was that her eyeballs glowed like red orbs inside her sockets. The vampire snarled as she lunged forward.
Madison had just enough time to throw up her arms. The vampire was trying to bite her. Drool dripped off the ends of elongated fangs. Madison grunted and pivoted around, slamming the vampire’s back into the rear of the trailer. She dropped onto the pavement, and in a sweep of her leg, brought down the vampire. The vampire crashed h
ard, elbows crunched on the blacktop; she opened her mouth to howl in pain.
Madison sat up, swinging her forearm. The blow connected solidly with the side of the vampire’s face. A tooth was knocked free, and the howl silenced. She fell back, her legs wrapped around the vampire’s mid-section, and squeezed her thighs. She had the vampire’s arm, and twisted it at an awkward angle. Bone snapped.
Rolling around and out, Madison now sat on the vampire’s back, knees pressed onto the vampire’s neck. Madison fisted a chunk of hair in one hand, and with the other, retrieved the dagger from the sheath inside her coat lining and sliced the blade across the exposed throat.
The red lava spurted from the wound and spotted the pavement.
Getting to her feet, Madison looked around to see if any other attackers were nearby. She didn’t see any. It didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Satisfied she was alone, she pulled open both trailer doors. They swung open wide and banged against the sides of the trailer.
She pulled out her phone and called 911.
The call had been infuriating to make. The operator she talked to wanted more information than she had. Finally, Madison said: “Send police to the carnival at the mall. There is a trailer with the doors wide open. Inside are at least a dozen children chained together,” and then ended the call.
She couldn’t be certain, but by the smell, she thought it might be the same people.
The same kids.
They weren’t dead. They hadn’t been eaten.
Not all of them.
Most of them were still here. Alive.
“Help is coming,” she said.
When the kids were sure Madison was not there to harm them, the silence was shattered by crying.
She knelt by the first child and grabbed onto the chains that tethered him to the inside wall. She set her feet against the wall for leverage, and pulled. It was no use. Strong as she was she couldn’t pull apart padlocks, and she couldn’t rip chains from a wall.
There was one thing left to do.
Save Neal.
Chapter 26
The wind worked in her favor. If it didn’t mask her scent, at least it should confused Julius and the other vampires. Unless they could see her, it would be impossible to tell from which direction Madison was coming at them.
It wasn’t from the footpath, that was for sure. That was exactly how Julius had wanted it, directed it, and expected it. She had no intentions of making it that simple.
She ran to the woods and into them, but only after she heard the sound of sirens. Saving those kids was her second chance. They were more important. Neal would have to understand. Sacrifice was sometimes essential. There was no way she could live with herself if something happened to them.
The dark under the canopy of trees was near complete. Either there were no gaps in tree leaves, or the moon was behind thick blankets of clouds.
Even with her enhanced vision, it was difficult to see. She walked slowly, each step carefully placed. When she reached the rendezvous point she wanted to catch them off guard. If anything, she hoped for a few minutes to observe them before making her presence known. Neal would be guarded. It wasn’t like he’d be tied to some tree, unattended, where she could sneak in, untie him, and they could escape. That simplicity didn’t even happen in books or movies. She hoped it was the case, but was not holding her breath.
She stopped by a tree, her back pressed against cold bark, and listened. She closed her eyes. It made her hearing better, she thought.
“You’re not alone.”
It was a whisper. Madison pushed hard against the tree, her fingernails gripped the creases between bark tracks. Looking left and right revealed nothing. She looked up. No one was in the branches above her.
She knew something had warned her earlier, just as Neal was kidnapped.
It was that same voice, that same whisper.
“I’m with you.”
The sound of his voice was carried on wind blowing by her ears. She heard it, but also thought she could be mistaken.
“Who’s there?” she said. Saying anything was against her better judgment. The vampires would hear her. They would know right where she was. Entering the woods randomly would have been for nothing. She might as well have walked the path Julius had told her about.
Barely visible in the enveloping darkness, there was no mistaking a pillar of smoke the size of her arm as it appeared in front of her. It resembled cigarette smoke, white and gray and billowing. Only it stretched both upward and down. It expanded and became darker, but illuminated, as well. A soft glowing light pulsed at the center of the mass.
She waved her hand into it. The light would give her away. The smoke seemed to solidify. The top portion, anyway. Shoulders. A neck. Something like a head lunged forward.
Madison sliced through the image with her dagger. It swished across the smoke, cutting through dense air. Then the smoke became a chest and arms, hands and fingers, before filling in and floating down forming a. . .waist, and then becoming hazy as if the smoke stood erect inside a blossoming storm cloud.
“I am on your side,” it said, sounding more like hissing–air escaping a tire, or a snake with the ability to speak. “You are not alone.”
She had questions. Too many. Now wasn’t the time to ask. She needed the element of surprise, or at least the element of the unexpected, to hope for any chance against Julius and his vampires in the situation. If the vampires heard her talking to smoke, she’d lose the element.
Madison no longer questioned her sanity. Doubt had been removed. Her mind was lost. She couldn’t be sure she was even in Pennsylvania. It was more than likely that Neal was home with his family getting ready for bed, or as she suspected all along, her dad was sitting next to her in a hospital room, holding her hand while she lay in a coma. She was probably hooked up to a variety of monitors that beeped, and ventilation machines that breathed for her. There was one other, and equally plausible possibility. It was hard not to picture herself sitting Indian style wearing a blue hospital gown underneath a white straightjacket, hugging herself with the sleeve cuffs buckled down in the back of the restraint.
More and more these scenarios seemed likely and highly probable. It made sense to believe she was dying, or dead, or crazy, than to accept she was a vampire who was getting help from something made out of smoke.
The ghost, it didn’t scare her.
She knew it was what had caused her and Neal to wig out when he’d first dropped her off to live with her father. It had been riding in the vehicle with them. And the ghost had warned her that Neal was in danger earlier in the day. It seemed only fitting that it show up again now and offer help.
The ghost moved like morning fog low to the ground, rolling across the dirt and overgrown grass and the unraked mounds of rotted fallen leaves. The benefit: the smoke was swift, smooth, and soundless.
Distracted, Madison almost missed a telling sound: a twig snapped. It didn’t come from around her. It came from above.
Two vampires jumped from the branches.
The male vampire fell on top of her. She crumpled to the ground. The dagger fell out of her hand. She fumbled for it, her fingers stepping over raised tree roots and discarded pinecones. She didn’t think she could reach it. She just needed to extend her fingers a little more. . .
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the smoke whip around the female vampire, taunting and terrorizing her. Madison realized then, the smoke might want to help, but its physical actions would be limited.
The male vampire straddled Madison from behind. He grabbed her shoulder, his fingers pushed into her skin, long fingernails cut through her clothing and pierced flesh. With a solid grasp, he twisted her around. She allowed it. She had the dagger. She thrust her hips up and into the air. He fell forward. She jammed the blade of the dagger into the center of his chest. She held onto the handle with both hands, and it kept the vampire from collapsing onto her. It was almost mesmerizing to see the red lava f
low from the wound.
Beads of the lava rolled down the blade to the handle, and dripped from the wound. When it splashed onto her neck, she expected to be burned. The mix of brilliant yellow and red looked as hot as the sun, or like magma boiling in a bubbling ocean below the earth’s crust. Instead it was warm, but not hot. The lava didn’t burn. Instead it just flowed. Even though she’d left the dagger in place, it seeped from the wound. And then it poured from it, and then it sprayed all over her face as if she’d held her thumb pressed over the mouth of a garden hose. It was just vampire blood. Colorful, bright vampire blood.
The vampire melted away into nothing.
With the desolation over in seconds, she pushed the remains off and away, and rolled over onto her knees. The fog, that was her ally, continued to thwart the female vampire swirling in front of her, sliding under her, swimming around her on both sides, and then lingering behind her as Madison got to her feet.
Madison lunged at the female, ignoring the vampire’s personal tornado, and stabbed her dagger into the lower back. She slapped a hand onto the female’s shoulder and held her in place in order to shove the blade in deep, to the hilt. She yanked the blade to the side, cutting through the spine. The female crumbled to the cold hard earth in a growing pool of vampire blood.
“This is not going to be easy,” she said, unsure if she was talking to herself or the ghost.
Chapter 27
Madison had no idea how deep into the woods she had travelled. It was further in than Julius had indicated. She knew where she was headed, though. She could smell Neal, recognizing the scent of his blood. She could tell that he was frightened because his body released an odor that reeked of fear, but smelled almost too sweet.
Several yards ahead, she saw him. Her friend was tied upside down to a tree. His legs formed a giant Y, and were secured to thick branches on either side of the trunk. At least he was alive, breathing, scared, but she sensed, otherwise unharmed.
Neal was alone. Appeared alone, anyway.
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