by Wendi Wilson
And he’d brought back zero supplies.
Oh God.
This was where I’d been imprisoned for two days. I could see the floor with the trap door where he’d hidden me just before…
I felt my consciousness slip away again, trying to drag me into blissful oblivion.
True patted my face, hers hovering over me. “Piper,” she whispered, her eyes darting up in fear to make sure none of the vampires heard her. “Wake up.”
I bolted up, fighting the darkness, refusing to go quietly into unconsciousness. True needed me. Mom needed me.
Because there was something I hadn’t been able to fully process until this moment.
Micah was dead.
I’d seen her body splayed out on the floor right where my father had been murdered, her black blood slipping through the cracks between the wooden slats just as his had. There was no question if she was dead, or just injured, because her head lay four feet from her body.
Her freakin’ head!
That was why she hadn’t followed the plan. That was why the door never slammed. Sarah had killed her. And she would kill us next.
We needed to get out of here. We needed backup.
But Mom and Levi. I couldn’t just leave them.
A calm feeling settled over me as I made a decision I hoped I wouldn’t live to regret. I would stay and fight, but True had to go.
Sitting up, I gripped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “You go,” I mouthed. “Run.”
She shook her head.
I dug my fingers into her skin, willing her to listen. “You go. Too dangerous,” I mouthed. I gave her shoulder a shove. “Go. Get help.”
True frowned at me. Her lips formed a word that was as unmistakable as it was stubborn. “No.”
This was all going so wrong. Mom and Levi were already in grave danger. I couldn’t risk True, too.
“Please,” I mouthed, tears filling my eyes again.
She shook her head, her own tears starting to flow. Once again, her hand found mine.
I was about to shove her away when, behind us, the door yawned open. A shadow sprung out and hands gripped my shoulders, yanking me inside. As I took my next breath, I was tossed on the floor. Bumping into something solid, I turned to find I was lying beside Micah’s corpse.
No. Oh, no.
Before I could scramble up, Lars stepped into the light. Behind him, Chef Chloe was dragging in True, who fought valiantly but stood no chance against the vampire.
Micah had been wrong. This wasn’t Sarah acting alone. It was at least three strong vampires, maybe more. I’d have thought Micah was involved in the plot to bring us here, except her body lay cold and lifeless beside me, her skin flaking as it turned to the color of cold ash. She’d been duped like the rest of us.
Sarah, queen of it all, stepped into the room, glaring down at me like I was a cockroach she’d like to grind into dust.
One corner of her mouth curled up into a nasty, self-satisfied smile. “Oh good. You’re here. Now we can get started.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
My gaze darted around the room, ignoring Sarah’s words, Lars’s dark laughter, and True’s grunting as she tried to pull free of Chloe’s grasp. I froze as I spotted Levi standing in a darkened corner, his head turned down and his eyes closed as if he were sleeping.
“Levi,” I begged, “wake up! Please. Help us.”
He didn’t even twitch a muscle, and I felt my panic rising as Lars chuckled. I turned toward the sound, but stopped mid-motion when I spotted Mom in a chair at the rickety wood table. She was bound and gagged with long strips of fabric, her eyes filled with terror.
I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat as my eyes travelled over her ratty hair, bloodshot eyes, and a dark bruise forming on her cheekbone. I took in the rest of her, my gaze locking on a puckered, bloody wound on her forearm.
A wound that looked very much like the one I saw on that cow.
I inhaled sharply as my heart leapt into my throat, but the fear and revulsion quickly morphed into anger. One of these bloodsucking assholes had bitten my mother.
“Oh, now isn’t this interesting?” Sarah asked in a mocking tone, sensing my anger. “Are you pissed, little human? Do you want to punish me for making a snack out of your wimpy mother?”
“Let. Her. Go,” I gritted out between clenched teeth.
“Or what? You’ll spray me with holy water?” She laughed, then turned serious. “No, I bet our friend Micah here taught you the difference between myth and reality, didn’t she? Traitor.”
She spat the last word, kicking Micah’s head, sending it rolling across the floor to disappear behind the couch. I swallowed against the bile rising up my throat, ordering myself not to puke.
Lars laughed again, and I wondered wildly if that was his only role here—to placate Sarah by condoning her every action. Chloe remained silent, her hand gripping a big chunk of True’s curly hair to hold her still.
“You have me here. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Let my mother and True go. You don’t need them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that’s entirely true,” Sarah replied, her voice taking on a lighter tone as she ambled in a circle around me. “My compulsion is strong, but even I don’t think I could make a mother forget her own daughter forever. No, she’ll have to die alongside you.”
“People will look for us,” I said. “They’ll find our bodies, there will be an investigation.”
“Another unfortunate bear attack, I’m afraid,” she said, feigning sadness as she shook her head.
“You bitch,” I growled, attempting to lunge to my feet.
Lars kicked me in the back of my left knee, making it buckle and sending me crashing back to the floor. Sarah paused in front of me, staring down with her head cocked to the side.
“What were you going to do, Piper?” she taunted. “Attack me? I will snap you like a twig, then drain every ounce of blood from your body while your mother and your little girlfriend watch.”
My eyes darted back to the corner where Levi stood, his body still frozen as if in a trance. I looked from him to True, who was still struggling against Chloe’s hold despite making zero progress. Then, I looked at Mom, whose tears were running full force now.
Dean Purty is coming, I reminded myself. If I can just keep them talking a while longer, he’ll save us.
“Why do you want me dead so bad, anyway?” I asked aloud. “This can’t be about me seeing you attack a camper. He doesn’t remember it, so it’s a non-issue.”
“Did you know I’ve been a counselor at that camp every summer for the last thirty years? The campers age out before they have time to notice I’m not aging, and the random human counselors move on, so my youthful appearance is not an issue.”
What the hell was she talking about? I wanted to snap at her for changing the subject, but I restrained myself as I realized keeping her talking was a perfect stall tactic. But I needed to play this carefully and not seem too eager.
“So?” I asked.
“Are you stupid?” she snapped, then looked at Lars. “She’s stupid, right?”
“An idiot,” he agreed.
Yep. That proved it. His only job was to suck up to Sarah. If I could take her out, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
“Let me explain this so your feeble human brain can understand it, you idiotic cow. If I’ve been at Camp Shadow Lake every summer for the last thirty years, that means I was there twenty years ago… when your father worked there as a counselor.”
My head reared back as she stared at me with mischievous eyes that seemed… wrong, given the situation.
“My father?” I breathed.
“Scott was a looker, wasn’t he Mrs. Williams?” she called out, waggling her blonde eyebrows at my mom. “And so very delicious.”
The bile flew up my throat again, and this time, I couldn’t stop it. Sarah took two quick steps back as I spewed vomit at her feet. I wiped the back of my h
and across my mouth as I glared up at her, wrinkling her nose in disgust as if my very normal reaction of puking was grosser than her off-the-cuff comment about drinking my father’s blood.
“Before the illustrious Charles Purty and The Society came to Camp Shadow Lake,” she sneered, “it served as a… What’s a good word?”
Her eyes darted to Chloe, who called out, “Buffet.”
“Yes,” Sarah said, her gaze narrowing on me. “A buffet for our kind. Poor, homeless orphans, useless to society and easily dismissed if they were to go missing, came to camp for a couple of weeks of freedom, only to find themselves herded like cattle to feed us.”
My stomach rumbled with the need to empty itself again, but I managed to hold it down. Sarah obviously had some point she was trying to make, but her flare for the dramatic was dragging the story out. Of course, that worked in my favor, so I kept my mouth shut and let her keep talking.
She’s like a villain in a movie, giving a long monologue, laying out all of her dastardly deeds before telling the hero her evil plan. It was the only time her vanity worked in my favor.
But who was the hero in this story? Me? Doubtful. I’d say it was Levi, but he still stood immobile and useless in the corner.
“Your father went to the old dean, raving about some dream he’d had. A vision of someone attacking him. Someone ravaging his body while they drank his blood.” She paused for a moment to stare at me meaningfully. “I guess his dream became reality in the end, didn’t it?”
Holy shit. Did my dad have a vision, like me?
My eyes darted to True, who had gone still. Her dark eyes were wide as she stared back at me.
“I’d been drinking from him and compelling him for weeks, but the dean ordered me to stop. Unlike the campers, he did have a family. People who would search for him and bring the authorities to our door. He was too big a risk. The dean, himself, compelled Scott to forget his vision and all of his suspicions. The only thing he remembered about Camp Shadow Lake was the fulfillment it gave him to work there.”
“Is that why you killed him?” I spat, all the pieces falling together. “Because he remembered what you did to him?”
A dark laugh erupted from her pink lips as she stared at me with wild eyes. She shook her head, saying, “I didn’t kill him, stupid.”
“Then who did?” I demanded, all feeling of queasiness gone as anger flowed thickly through my veins once more.
“I’ll never tell,” she teased, giving me a sadistic smile. “It doesn’t matter anyway. By the time I’m done here tonight, you’ll be dead, and there will be no one left to ask questions.”
“Just kill her already, Sarah,” Chloe said in her subtle French accent. “I grow weary of this game.”
“The game is over when I say it’s over,” Sarah snapped back, her eyes shooting sparks at the chef.
True yelped as Chloe’s grip tightened in her hair. “Let go of me, you pretentious bitch,” she growled, her claws raking at Chloe’s arm in an attempt to free herself.
Chloe gave her head a hard shake and threw her to the floor. Her eyes widened with renewed fear as she struggled to scooch away from Micah’s headless body and the puddle of blood under her cheek. Chloe laughed, a deep, throaty sound that sent chills down my spine, before grabbing True’s hair and pulling her back to her knees.
My eyes drifted from her to Levi, still unmoving, to my mom. She was still bound and gagged in the chair, but something had changed. There was a wild and triumphant gleam in her eyes that disappeared so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. What was that about?
“Look at me, you stupid meat sack.” My eyes darted back to Sarah, who smiled with satisfaction. “I want to see the fear in your eyes when I tell you I’m about to drain the life out of you, drop by delicious drop.”
Before she even finished speaking, she pounced. Her body crashed against mine, knocking me onto my back. My hands landed on the wooden floor, feeling the grain of it beneath my fingertips. Sarah’s weight slammed on top of me, her hands pushing against my shoulders to hold me down.
Time slowed to a crawl as her face loomed over me. I had a feeling of déjà vu, a strange sense of familiarity hanging over me as my hands flew up in an attempt to defend myself.
Sarah opened her mouth, revealing elongated canines dripping with saliva. My heart stopped at the sight of them. A growl vibrated in her chest as her expression turned feral and one hand fisted in my hair to tilt my head back and expose my neck.
Time sped up as my heart thumped back to life. This was it. The wood floor. The weight pinning me to it. The pain that was sure to come.
This was what I’d seen in the vision. It was real, and I was about to die.
I bucked my hips and swiped my fingernails toward her face, but she was too fast. Too strong.
As her hot breath wafted against the delicate skin of my neck, I fell still. There was no point in fighting. I was as good as dead.
Sarah had won.
My eyes drifted to True, still trapped in Chloe’s iron grip. She watched me with fear-filled eyes that dripped tears down her beautiful face.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed, and she shook her head vigorously as if to tell me this wasn’t all my fault.
A flare of pain in my neck made me scream as a rush of heat flashed from my throat all the way down to my toes. There was a slight tugging sensation as Sarah began to suck at the wound, and I squeezed my eyes closed against the feeling. Moans of pleasure rumbled from her as she drank my blood in long, painful pulls.
A scream of anger echoed around us as Sarah’s weight doubled on top of me, and I opened my eyes to see my mother’s fear-ravaged face over her shoulder. Sarah’s head jerked back, her teeth tearing my flesh as Mom jerked her by the hair in an attempt to pull her off of me.
She was free! How? She must’ve worked her way out of her bonds while Sarah was monologuing.
Sarah jumped to her feet and shoved my mother, who crashed back into the wooden table. It buckled under the force, the tabletop hitting the floor as the legs shattered. Mom lay on top of the rubble, unmoving. Something landed by my hip, and my fingers curled around it.
Too weak to get up, I was still lying in the same spot when Sarah turned back to me. My blood was smeared across her face and down her chin, staining her white Camp Shadow Lake t-shirt. She snarled at me and leapt forward, knees straddling my hips as she came down on top of me.
I pulled my hand into my chest at the last second, the splintered piece of the table leg gripped tightly in my fist. Shards of wood stung my palm as the force of Sarah’s momentum pushed the sharp end into her flesh, but I held tight, refusing to let go.
Sarah’s eyes widened as a warm, sticky fluid coated my hand. I knew that feeling. I’d felt it before, when my father’s blood dripped through these very floorboards to coat my face.
As I watched, the vampire’s skin turned gray, black veins showing through the now-translucent skin. Her eyes rolled back in her head just before she collapsed on top of me. Then she was still.
Before I could take my next breath, a roar of rage vibrated through me, warming my cold, sweaty, half-drained body. Despite my wooziness, or maybe because of it, my lips pulled up into a serene smile.
Levi was awake.
Chapter Twenty-Six
If I had any doubts about Levi’s fighting skills, they evaporated the moment Sarah’s spell broke. Levi rose up like a vicious panther, coiled and ready for battle. Whirling, he scanned the room, appearing to take note of all that had gone down in the blink of an eye.
“Sarah,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble as he noted her dead body. Then his head snapped up, and he zeroed in on Lars.
Lars and Chloe seemed frozen in the wake of Sarah’s death at my hand and Levi’s sudden recovery. She’d been their leader, the one to call the shots, and now she was slowly disintegrating on the floorboards. Her skin, like Micah’s, was withering and flaking like ash. It was not at all what they’d expected to happen.
<
br /> I couldn’t quite believe it, either. One moment she was killing me, the next… I’d killed her? My vision… Had I been wrong or had I somehow changed my fate?
I didn’t have time to process. Levi moved with superhuman speed, darting to Lars. Their bodies slammed together as arms locked around each other, hands clawing towards each other’s throats. They hissed, showing off long fangs as animalistic instincts seemed to take over. Wrestling, they slammed each other back and forth, smashing walls, destroying furniture.
I’d never seen anything like it. They were terrifying, perfect examples of an apex predator.
I scrambled up, the wooden stake somehow still in my fist. I must’ve pulled it out of Sarah’s body, but I had no memory of it.
My eyes tracked the fight as Levi slammed Lars into the wall, knocking the cuckoo clock to the floor. It erupted in a jangling tune before stopping abruptly. Levi seemed to have the upper hand until Lars punched him in the stomach. I flinched, but to my surprise, it did nothing to deter him from choking the life out of Sarah’s henchman.
The look in Levi’s eyes as he squeezed and squeezed made me shiver with dread. Corded muscles stood out on his arms. His chest heaved as he strained to use every bit of force to subdue Lars. With his fangs unsheathed, he looked every bit the vampire depicted in books and movies.
I stared in awe and terror, unable to tear my eyes away from the destruction.
Lars gagged and clawed at Levi’s hands, his feet scrambling on the floor, but nothing he did could dislodge Levi’s hands from his throat. Would choking him be enough to end him?
A blur to my left made me turn in time to see Chloe finally join the fight.
“Look out!” I shouted, but it was too late.
She zoomed behind Levi and kicked, knocking his knees forward. He buckled, his hands dropping from Lars’s throat. As he fell, she gripped his shoulder and yanked down. Levi fell hard on his back as Chloe and Lars circled over him.