by Bella Abbott
“The tide.” He dragged me across the room and reached into the water. “Sit,” he ordered. I did as instructed. He removed a length of chain attached to an iron ring in the stone floor and forced it around my bound wrists, coiling it several times before clamping the end link to one of the middle links with a galvanized shackle. He stepped away and surveyed his work with approval.
“Tide comes up about two feet per hour. I figure that gives you maybe three before you drown, assuming hypothermia doesn’t get you first, which would be my bet. I’d give even money on you being dead inside an hour, although it’s apparently not a bad way to go – you just drift off into nothingness.”
“Why are you doing this, Victor?” I asked between sobs. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“My parents were killed by a vampire. You don’t matter. I don’t matter. Nothing does except eliminating them until there are none left.”
“And how do you plan to do that? I thought they were supposed to be invulnerable. They can fly, transform into bats, walk through walls.”
His smile was as cruel as his eyes. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?” Victor looked around the room. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, seeing as you’re not long for the world. I have some powerful magic working for me. Four talismans placed at the four entrances of the building. A sorcerer I met through some cellmates out of New Orleans introduced me to this world – a powerful juju man, who filled me in all about vampires. He created a spell that will render your boyfriend, or any other vampire, powerless within the square created by the talismans. He’ll be an ordinary mortal with no superpowers once he’s inside, whereas I’ve been practicing vampire killing for years. He’s got no chance.”
“You believe in sorcerers, too?” I asked, egging him on for more information. “Really? And you never questioned this crap? The world’s overrun with ghosts and goblins, and you bought into it?”
He took a step toward me and then stopped, his eyes sly. “I see what you’re trying to do. Maybe you aren’t as dumb as you seem. But it doesn’t matter. Your boyfriend shows, I zap him with my crossbow, and the rest is history.”
“You’re going to commit murder over some fantasy? The cops are going to have a field day with that – ‘But officer, he was a vampire!’”
“His driver turned to dust when I cut his heart out and burned it. Nice try, but I saw it with my own eyes. I don’t know how you got mixed up with these creatures, but I’ll sleep just fine knowing one of their consorts went down with them.”
“Consorts?”
He turned from me. “Enough of this. I need to prepare. The spell’s very specific. The bracelets need to be in position in three of the four entryways, and once he’s inside, the fourth closes the square, and he’s trapped. Then he’s mine.”
“Does your brother know you’re batshit crazy?”
“My brother’s a fool. He knows nothing but what his books tell him.”
“Then he doesn’t know you’re living in a B-level horror movie, playing the not-so-smart villain?”
He chuckled and faced me. “Your insults won’t help you. I know you believe you’re distracting me, or buying time, but you’re achieving nothing. This is all foreordained. The sorcerer told me all this when he prepared me to be a hunter.”
“Did the sorcerer give you some magic mushrooms when he was preparing you? Because this is the nuttiest garbage I’ve ever heard. Seriously. You’ve got to be as high as a kite.”
“He gave me a potion that makes me as strong as one of these unholy creatures for a little while. The tables are turned, and there’s no escape for your boy – or for you. So laugh all you want as you slowly freeze to death,” he spat. Then he turned, leaving me alone and sopping wet on the floor of the vault, the water now five inches deeper in just the time we’d been there.
I worked at the chain, but after a few minutes it was obvious that my fingers weren’t strong enough to unscrew the shackle that held the links together. I could feel my hands shaking as cold crept into my legs, and I managed to pull myself out of the water, into a crouch, leaving only my boots submerged.
My mind raced at what I’d been able to glean from Victor. He obviously hadn’t gotten the brains in the family, and he’d been so confident he’d let some critical information slip. First, he was working alone. Second, the talismans were the crux of his entire strategy, and they required him to move the final one into position to activate the spell. Third, the talismans were bracelets. And most important, his strength was being artificially boosted, which meant that once Jared was stripped of his power, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Knowing all that wasn’t much good with me bolted to the floor, but if I couldn’t escape, I could try to communicate what I knew to Jared. I remembered what he’d said about being able to read the thoughts of those he was connected to when they were in high states of emotion. I didn’t have to work very hard to be terrified of drowning or freezing to death, and terror was about the strongest emotion I could imagine.
I squeezed my eyes shut and was trying to visualize the area we’d walked through when a furry form skittered through the water with a squeak. I screamed as the rat neared me, and swatted at it with what I could of the chain. I was shivering from head to toe when I stopped flailing and listened in the dead silence of the chamber for a hint of the rat’s position.
Some splashing at the far corner told me it had abandoned its quest for a dry island – or perhaps an easy meal – and I went back to trying to gather my mental resources and projecting a mental image of the danger above – however that worked. That I had not the faintest idea of what I was doing was a marked disadvantage, but I couldn’t allow the little voice in my head to distract me with doubts.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Jared having called and threatened Victor if anything happened to me. But that mitigated the terror somewhat, so I pushed the thought out of my mind and focused on reconstructing the ground floor of the fort, as well as vividly imagining the bracelets both Victor and his brother wore.
The water was now at my calves, and my feet were numb, which further distracted me. I slowed my breathing and concentrated, visualizing the area we’d walked through on the way to the stairway.
After five minutes, I gave up. Even though I was petrified, the cold that was seeping through my body was muting the panic, and with it, the intensity of emotion I could harness.
I began working on the clasp again, my fingers nearly as numb as my toes now. My breath hissed between my chattering teeth as I fumbled with the threaded metal pin, trying to get some leverage on it while the sea rose, dulling my senses as degree by degree it cooled my body temperature and slowed my ability to think – and with it, my ability to muster up emotions strong enough to give Jared a fighting chance.
Chapter 34
I tore my fingers open on the flat nub of the screw pin securing the chain, but the cold was winning. I felt increasingly listless and unfocused in spite of the deadliness of my position, my chattering teeth contributing to my distraction. You’d think that knowing the dangers of hypothermia would help you fight it, but that’s not how it works. I could feel myself simultaneously succumbing and ceasing to care.
I took a break from working at the clasp and sat in the water. My legs were cramping from crouching for a half hour or more, and I needed to take the weight off them for a bit. I shivered again from the chill of the sea and tried to figure out if there was anything I’d missed, some way out of my predicament I’d overlooked.
The splash of the rat’s return galvanized me to action, and I flailed at the surface of the water again with the chain. The effort threw me off balance, and I caught myself against the submerged floor with my bound hands. As I pushed myself upright, my right index finger scraped along a gap between the stones. An idea popped into my head, and once I was sure that the rat had retreated to safer ground, I felt along the joint until I found the opening again.
It took four tri
es to slide the shackle around until I could wedge the flat end of the pin in the groove. Once it was firmly seated, I fought through the hypothermia fog to recall which direction the pin would need to turn in order to unscrew. After a seeming eternity I remembered it was counterclockwise, and I heaved with all my remaining strength.
The pin pulled free of the gap and I toppled sideways into the water, the icy splash shocking me into full awareness. I cried softly as I pushed myself back into a sitting position and repeated my exploration of the floor until I had the pin wedged securely again.
This time when I tried to twist the shackle, the pin moved. Only a fraction of an inch, but still, I felt it shift. I exerted steady pressure, and it continued turning. I gasped in relief and extracted the shackle from the gap, and then worked the pin free with my bleeding fingers.
The pin dropped into the water with a splash, and I focused on twisting the shackle free from the links. After I’d done so, I began the slow process of flipping the end of the chain so it unwound from the rope that bound my wrists. Five minutes later I was feeling my way along the slimy wall toward the stairs. When I reached the door, which Victor had left ajar, I rubbed the rope against the rough stone edge of the doorway corner, sawing at the binding until it frayed. I ignored the shredding of my forearm skin in the process – I was free of the cell, and soon I’d be unbound, making any price I paid more than worth it.
Eventually the rope gave way and I pulled my wrists apart. Feeling returned to my numb hands with a thousand pinpricks of agony, and I clenched and unclenched them until the pain subsided somewhat. I swallowed and took several deep breaths while the water lapped at the step upon which I stood – I’d managed to liberate myself, but now what? It was pitch black, I had no idea what was going on above me or where Victor had gone, and I had no weapon. Other than that…
I shook off my paralysis. Jared needed me – I was his only hope, if Victor had been telling the truth. Somewhere in the darkness above, Victor was lying in wait with a crossbow, which I guessed wouldn’t do much if Jared had his powers, but without them it might incapacitate him long enough for Victor to finish the job.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to recall the position of the stairway relative to the entrance. We’d walked…fifteen yards? Twenty? I wasn’t sure.
I reached out with a trembling hand, felt along the cold stone stairwell wall, and took a hesitant step up. Halfway to the top a flash of lightning illuminated the shaft, and I remembered from our sailboat outing that the roof and top parts of the fort walls had collapsed inward, so it was open sky above.
The boom of thunder two seconds later told me the storm was pushing out to sea. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I continued toward the top of the stairs, moving cautiously to avoid slipping and falling. When I reached the top, I stood in the doorway and peered around, but I couldn’t make out a thing. I silently prayed that Jared would stay away, but I didn’t have much hope.
Another momentary glow from the clouds lit the interior, and I got an instant visual of the large room. The center of the floor was littered with rubble, and alcoves and partially collapsed walls ringed the space. The entryway lay directly across from me, about a dozen yards away. I debated sprinting for it, but remembered the crossbow. I wasn’t sure how Victor was planning on seeing anything in the absolute darkness, but my suspicion was that if his potion hadn’t imbued him with vampiric night vision in addition to strength, he probably had some sort of scope or goggles, like I’d seen on cop shows.
I waited in silence as the rain fell around me. My body temperature was slowly climbing now that I was out of the water and had moved a bit, but the drizzle was hindering the process. My heart was beating rapidly as it labored to pump blood to my oxygen-starved muscles, and my pulse was creating a flash of light in my eyes with each beat of my heart. I turned my head, listening intently, but only heard the steady patter of rain on the stone floor and a muted reverberation after each peal of thunder.
Another streak of lightning brightened the room, and a glint from near a large gap in the outer wall caught my eye – was that one of the bracelets Victor was using for his spell? I couldn’t be sure. There might be beer cans tossed around the ruins or some other metallic trash reflecting the storm’s light.
There was no sign of Victor in the area I could make out from the stairwell, so I had to assume he was lying in wait somewhere behind it. Which made running for the exit a poor idea unless I wanted to wind up skewered by his crossbow before I made it halfway there.
A low moan sounded from my right, but it was just the wind blowing through a partially ruined wall. The rain began to abate, and the patter of drops on the stone floor lessened as I held my breath, waiting for something to give Victor away.
“All right! I’m here. Where is she?” Jared’s voice called from one of the gaps in the wall to my left. My blood ran cold at his words.
I couldn’t see him, but I knew that the moment he stepped into the ruins, Victor would close the square with the fourth bracelet. I was going to scream a warning, but before I could, another flash of lightning lit the chamber and I spotted Jared, now already inside the fort.
“Jared, no! Run!” I yelled.
He turned toward me, and a shaft appeared above his right hip, impaling him at an angle and knocking him to the floor. Victor’s boots scraped on the stone behind the stairwell as he moved to put the final talisman into place, spurring me into motion. I bolted from the stairs and sprinted for the entrance where I’d seen the reflection, and was almost there when I tripped on a piece of rubble and sprawled forward, scraping my hands and knocking the wind out of me.
“There’s no escape,” Victor said with a laugh, and set the last bracelet by the far wall.
Jared moaned, the crossbow quarrel now affecting him as it would a mortal, his rapid healing no doubt short-circuited by the spell. I heard Victor’s boots crunching on the debris as he approached Jared, and I forced myself to my knees, my breath coming in rasps. I dragged myself toward the entrance and was almost to it when Victor materialized and kicked me in the ribs hard enough to lift me off the ground.
I cried out, the pain blinding, and nearly passed out. Victor snickered and then growled at me.
“First your boy gets it; then I’m coming back for you, doll face.”
I struggled for air, my ribs sending white-hot spikes of agony through me with each breath. Victor must have seen that I was incapacitated, because his footsteps moved away from me, back to where Jared was lying motionless. Rain ran down my face in streaks, blending with tears of pain and frustration. The entrance was only a few yards away, but it might as well have been a mile.
Another flash of lightning split the sky, and I saw the bracelet by the threshold. I mustered my strength, and with a superhuman effort lunged from the ground, ignoring the risk Victor would shoot me in the back. I hit the stone floor near the bracelet hard and frantically groped along the wall…and then my fingers felt metal and I had it in my hand.
I didn’t know how the spell worked, but if it had rendered Jared powerless in the interior of the fort, I figured it had to remain somewhere it would form one of the corners of the square. I pushed myself to my knees, and Victor screamed at me in rage.
“What are you doing?” he bellowed, but it was too late.
I hurled the bracelet into the rain through a gap in the wall to my left, and was rewarded with an infuriated roar from Victor that told me my instinct on how to destroy the spell had been good.
“Noooo!!!”
Everything happened so fast. The moon appeared from behind the clouds for several moments, and I saw Victor with the crossbow in hand, night-vision goggles on his head and a backpack strapped to his back, standing no more than ten feet from Jared’s inert form. Jared’s legs moved, and then his arms. Victor fumbled with the crossbow, working to cock it as Jared’s powers returned and his body began mending before my eyes.
Victor had seated a bolt and was raising the weapon when
Jared moved in a blur, so fast I could barely follow it. The crossbow went sailing through the air and skittered along the stone floor. Victor howled in pain and swung at Jared with a roundhouse blow, but he was punching at a shadow, a ghost – Jared was now behind him and delivered a powerful kick to Victor’s lower spine, knocking him forward.
Jared was in motion again before Victor could regain his balance, sweep-kicking Victor’s legs from under him as he stumbled toward a rubble pile, and sending him sprawling onto his hands and knees. But Victor recovered faster than I would have thought possible even as Jared lunged at him, and then they were on the floor, grappling with each other and battling to deliver blows to each other’s heads.
Victor sucker-punched Jared in the side, where the crossbow bolt still speared his abdomen, and Jared cried out and rolled away. Victor pressed his advantage and threw himself at Jared, who blocked another blow with his arm and struck Victor in the side of the head with a closed fist.
I could see in the dim light that even though Jared was regaining his powers, Victor was more than evenly matched in strength, if not speed. The crossbow had definitely done some damage, and it was affecting Jared, who was obviously struggling; and Victor had enhanced his own mortal powers.
Victor grabbed a chunk of rubble the size of a football and slammed it down where Jared’s face had been only an instant earlier, but Jared had seen it coming and shifted out of the way. He struck Victor in the head again with his forearm, and this time the night-vision goggles flew into the darkness with a clatter.
Victor exploded to his feet with a roar and managed to land a kick to Jared’s ribs. Jared rolled away, but I heard the snap of bone.
They fought in silence, Victor using chunks of rubble, his augmented strength such that he shattered the stones to powder with each strike. I watched in horror through the dim glow of moonlight as he inflicted abuse upon Jared, whose speed was clearly impaired from his injury, and when Victor nearly crushed Jared’s skull again, I leapt into action.