by Melody Raven
She didn’t want to upset Brad any further, so she tried to sound pleasant when she asked, “How can I help you?”
“What took you so long?” No apology or explanation.
“I’m sorry.” She still tried to sound amiable. “I was a bit confused as to how you knew where I lived. I’m sure you can understand my hesitation.”
He looked at her for a second, confused. His usually perfect hair was in shambles around his face. His skin was ashen and covered in a sheen of sweat, probably from the exertion of beating the crap out of her door.
“We need to get out of here,” he said. “You’re in trouble.”
“I’m in trouble? What is going on? And how did you get my address?”
“I can’t talk about this now. You need to come with me.”
Anna stared at him. There wasn’t anything he could say that would make her go with him. “How did you get my address?” She would have to tread lightly, but she needed to keep him distracted until Nicolas got there.
“It doesn’t matter. Open the door.” He pushed at the door. Luckily, the chain kept it from slamming open.
She had the sinking realization that stalling wouldn’t work. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You need to explain yourself right now,” she said with all the authority her voice could muster.
Apparently he didn’t feel like explaining himself, because he just hit her door again, with even more force this time. When he reared back to hit it again, she slammed the door in his face. She quickly turned all the locks. He continued to bang on the door, but Anna was rather confident he couldn’t break it down with his bare hands.
She supposed he could always run out to get an ax, but he seemed too enraged to go anywhere, and Anna didn’t think there was any place near her in the city that sold tools capable of breaking in doors.
The sun wasn’t supposed to set for another fifteen minutes, but the sun was already low enough that the city was covered in shadow. Nicolas might be awake already. She called him.
He picked up on the first ring. She breathed out a sigh of relief that she didn’t realize she’d been holding in.
“Annabelle?” he said.
Before she could reply, Brad banged on the door again and yelled out a few more choice words. Nicolas asked, “What is going on?”
Anna honestly answered, “I have no idea. He showed up a few minutes ago and has made it his mission in life to destroy my door.” Brad shouted a few more cuss words directed at her. “And my reputation,” added Anna. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the neighbors has called the police by now.”
“Stay there. Don’t open the door for the police if they try to get in,” he said.
“Me not opening the door won’t stop the police from getting in if they really want to,” Anna said. “It’s only one guy. I’m sure I can get around him. I can meet you somewhere else.”
“You can get around him? How do you expect to do that?”
Anna wasn’t defenseless. She wanted to make sure no man could ever make her feel the way Charles had. She knew how to fight, and she was smart. It might not be enough to allow her to beat Nicolas, but she was sure that faced with a human, she had a good chance of winning a fight. Brad was probably tired by now anyway, and he was obviously not thinking clearly at this point.
She answered as quietly as possible, worried that between shouts and bangs Brad could hear her side of the conversation. “I could open the door when he isn’t expecting it, and bang him over the head. Then I’m out of here.”
“Stay inside until I get there, Annabelle,” Nicolas grumbled into the phone.
“When will that be?” Her question was punctuated by more banging. Brad must have seriously injured his hands by now. She realized Nicolas hadn’t answered her. “How long will you be? Nicolas?” She looked down and realized he’d hung up.
She cursed and shoved her phone in her pocket. She believed Nicolas would be there soon but didn’t want to take chances. She didn’t have much she could use as a weapon. She had a baseball bat in her bedroom closet for defense, but the hallway was too small to allow her to get a good swing in. She had knives, but she didn’t want to accidently kill Brad. If he was under the control of a vampire, she didn’t want him to die for it.
She settled on a large skillet from under her stove. It was small enough that she could get a good swing, and heavy enough to do a good amount of damage without killing Brad.
She sat along her wall with the skillet in her hand and her duffel bag next to her. She was ready to spring up at a moment’s notice. The pounding and shouting on the door wouldn’t stop. She hated waiting. Charles had locked her in a closet once. She could do nothing but wait for him to decide it was time for her to come out.
But Anna was different now. She had a weapon in her hand and help on the way. She wasn’t a little girl any more.
After another five minutes of waiting, the hallway suddenly went silent. Anna looked at the door, expecting to hear more banging. Instead, Nicolas’s voice came through. “We’re leaving.” He didn’t shout, but she could hear him clearly.
Anna picked up her stuff and walked to the door. She looked through the peephole and was relieved to see Nicolas this time. She moved the skillet under one arm as she fought to undo her locks.
She opened up the door and stared up at Nicolas. He didn’t look too good. His face was pale, and his cheeks seemed a bit more sunken than normal. “Are you all right?”
He ignored her question. “Are you planning to do a lot of cooking?” She saw he was looking at the skillet under her arm.
She frowned and set the skillet back in her apartment. “I had no idea when you were planning on showing up. The strike and run was my backup plan.”
“Your weapon of choice was a frying pan?” he asked skeptically.
She didn’t feel like explaining herself to him right now. “Shouldn’t we be rushing?” She looked around and saw they were alone. “Where’s Brad?”
“You knew him?”
“Yes. Where is he?” she asked again, not wanting to be sidetracked.
Nicolas angled his head toward the entryway and walked out. Anna quickly shut and locked her door so she could follow.
Brad leaned up against the door that led to the street. There was only a small amount of glass on the upper half of the door, so anyone passing by would never see him. He wasn’t unconscious, but he seemed dazed.
“What did you do to him?” She couldn’t see any evidence of a fight.
“I asked him to cooperate.” He then looked at Brad and said, “Take us to the vehicle that you drove here.” Brad immediately stood up and walked out to the street.
Anna’s jaw dropped open as she followed them. “You did that-that vampire mind control thingy, didn’t you?”
“I’ve never heard of it referred to as a thingy before.” He had a hand on Brad’s upper arm as he walked to his car.
“You didn’t answer me,” she said, but didn’t press the question. She already knew the answer. “Why would Brad even have a car, anyway?” she asked of no one in particular.
They remained silent as they continued the long walk to Brad’s car. She followed behind Nicolas and Brad, who behaved as if he didn’t just spend the last twenty minutes trying with all of his strength to murder her door.
They reached the car, which turned out to be one of those overpriced sedans that only overpaid businessmen would ever waste money on when they lived in the city. It appeared they would be taking his car, but at this point she couldn’t work up that much guilt over it. Brad had said some rather horrible things to her.
She held her bag up. “Trunk?”
Nicolas shook his head. “If we need to bail, we will need it close.” He turned to Brad. “Give her your keys.”
Obediently and blank-eyed, Brad dug into his pocket and handed her a set of keys.
“That is so wrong,” said Anna.
Nicolas only rolled his eyes at her disapproval. “Unlock the doors,”
he said in a tone that suspiciously sounded like an order. She narrowed her eyes but still did as he asked.
He pushed Brad into the backseat and climbed in after him. “I’m driving?” she asked.
He poked his head out of the door. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t grow up in the city. I know how to drive.” In her experience, men hated women to drive them anywhere. She supposed Nicolas might not know how to drive, but she doubted it.
She added it to her growing list of things to worry about later. “Where should I head?”
He told her the freeway she should get on. It took her a second to get the seat and mirrors to the right positions. She could drive, but she hadn’t recently, and this was a different car than she was used to. It was also much newer than the cars she’d driven, so there were a lot more buttons, and Anna couldn’t decipher a purpose for most of them.
Soon enough she had the car started and pulled out. “Where are we going to drop him off?” She motioned to Brad.
Brad sat nice as could be in the backseat. Nicolas had even buckled him in at some point. Nicolas, in contrast, was sprawled in the back with his head leaning against the headrest with a pained expression on his face. He still had the pallor she’d seen when she opened the door earlier.
“Not right now,” he said.
“Are you all right?” She repeated her earlier question he’d ignored.
“I’m tired,” he responded. “Those men who were meeting spent all night searching for me. I was running pretty much the whole night. Just before sunrise, they finally laid back to get shelter from the sun.”
“You didn’t get a chance to rest today?”
“I wanted to be alert if any humans came searching for me.”
“You were afraid they would control humans to search for you?” she said, not expecting an answer. “Is that why Brad was at my door? A vampire made him do it?”
Nicolas nodded. “He was being controlled, but not all of the display in your hallway was due to a vampire. A vampire could make him hit your door, but he couldn’t put that rage into it. That human does not like you.”
Anna didn’t like that Nicolas called Brad a human as if it was a bad thing. “I can’t imagine why. I only see the guy once a month. What can I do in that time to piss him off this much?”
“Has he ever showed any sexual interest in you?”
She raised her brows at that, but she saw in the rearview mirror that his eyes were closed. “He never showed any interest in me, sexual or otherwise.”
Nicolas opened his eyes and turned to Brad. “Tell me why you went to her,” he commanded with his voice.
Brad answered in a monotone voice, “The vampire told me to.”
Anna looked to Nicolas. “You said it was mind control.”
“He could’ve told the human and reinforced his order with his mind.” Nicolas looked at Brad. “Why did you do as you were told by the vampire?”
“He would kill me if I refused,” he said.
“Why would he threaten to kill him if he could just will Brad to do whatever he wanted?” asked Anna.
“Three reasons that could have happened. If the vampire is not nearby, but communicating over the phone lines, he would be unable to exercise his influence and would have to resort to threats. Eye contact is necessary. If it is an impure vampire, he would be unable to influence the minds of mortals. The other possibility is that it’s a pure vampire who wants us to believe he’s impure.”
Anna took a second to absorb that. “So you’re a ‘pure’ vampire? What on earth does that even mean?”
“Both of my parents were vampires, so I’m considered pure. Impure vampires are mortals turned vampire,” he said.
“You do know what I’m going to ask next, don’t you?”
“A mortal becomes vampire by drinking the blood of a vampire,” he responded. She made a face at that, not being able to imagine drinking someone’s blood. “It’s not nearly as unpleasant as it might sound.”
She gave him a quick look over her shoulder. “Says the guy who was born drinking blood,” she said. “So what other differences between pure and impure are there?”
“I survive on mortal blood. I can feed off vampire, but it does not fuel me like mortal blood. Impure vampires are the opposite. They must continue to feed off vampires, or they will starve.”
Anna thought about that, and then her eyes widened. “You are not going to eat Brad,” she ordered.
“I need to feed, Annabelle,” he said. She still hated when he used her full name. “I’m weak from last night, and I’ve used a lot of the strength I had left to get to you this evening and take care of this human.”
“That human is Brad,” she said. “You can’t just bite him. I know him!”
Nicolas closed his eyes, and his hands cradled his head, reminding her how weak he was. “What did you think I was going to eat on this little trip?” he asked.
“I don’t know. You had that bottled stuff at your place. Can’t we get more of that?”
He shook his head and winced, as if the action hurt him. “I’m being hunted now. I can’t be seen. If you remember, my apartment had unexpected visitors last night. There was no way I could get to my supplies.”
He looked up at her, and her face must have still shown her worry, because he said, “I’m not going to kill him. If vampires had to kill to feed, there would be no way we could’ve remained secret this long. He won’t remember a thing.”
Anna mulled it over. She didn’t like that his argument was beginning to make sense. She supposed she should be grateful he was even telling her all this. If he really wanted to feed, there was nothing she could do to stop him. After all the ruckus Brad had caused this evening, maybe he deserved a bite. For heaven’s sake, Anna had been ready to bash his head in with a skillet. A bite didn’t seem any worse than that.
“What will we do with him when you’re done? He’ll probably be too dizzy to walk anywhere.” The last time Anna had given blood, she had to wait at the office for an hour before she could walk a straight line. They couldn’t just push him onto the side of the road like that.
“We can ditch him in a cheap motel for the night.”
“Were you planning on biting me?” asked Anna. They obviously hadn’t planned to bring along any other human. Was she Nicolas’s other food source?
Nicolas was silent for a minute before he answered. “I wasn’t intending to use you as a food source, but biting and sex often go together, so I hadn’t ruled it out.”
Anna’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he were within reach, she might have considered slapping him. As he was out of her reach, she chose to ignore the comment. “What about the mind control stuff? Were you going to make me do anything for you if I refused?”
He seemed to get angry at that question. “You think I would make you have sex with me?”
“Anything you make me do against my will is offensive to me. Will you agree to keep out of my head?” she asked.
“When we have sex, you’ll be plenty willing without me messing around inside your head with anything besides my tongue,” he ground out.
“Will you shut up about the sex? It’s not happening!”
Nicolas leaned forward and put his hands on both of her shoulders. She immediately tensed up, but because of the small space, she didn’t move away. He spoke so close to her ear that she could feel his breath brush across her cheek. The sudden warmth caused a shiver to go through her body.
“I promise to stay out of your head,” he whispered to her. He leaned back into his seat.
“You’re a jerk. You know that, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer her question. By this time, they were getting onto a freeway. They were going faster and almost out of the city. Nicolas looked at Brad. “Who made you come to Anna?” he asked. She noticed that when talking to Brad, he used her shortened name.
“Mr. X,” was his answer.
“
Why do you have so much rage toward her?” asked Nicolas.
“It’s her fault he found me,” said Brad.
“How is it her fault?” Nicolas seemed to be patient with the short answers.
“Mr. X was looking for her. If she wasn’t in our group, he would have left me alone.”
“What was he holding over your head if you didn’t help him?” asked Anna.
Brad said nothing. She looked at Nicolas, and he repeated her question. “He would kill me,” Brad said.
“Did you ever meet him?” said Nicolas.
“Yes,” said Brad.
Anna rolled her eyes at the one-word answer, but Nicolas just said, “Describe your meeting.”
“I opened my door, and he bit me. He made me ask him inside, and he spent the night.”
“What did he look like?” asked Nicolas.
“He had my head covered,” said Brad.
Anna sighed in disappointment. “At least we know it’s a vampire. He’s probably impure if he had to physically force Brad to open the door.”
Nicolas dug out Brad’s cell phone from his pocket. He pressed a few buttons. “The last number to call his came up as unavailable.”
“That’s how Mr. X’s number comes up on mine,” said Anna.
Nicolas looked up to Anna. “I don’t think there’s anything more this Brad can tell us.” She felt the blood drain from her face when she understood the implication. If he was of no more use, Nicolas wanted his breakfast.
“You’re going to do it here? Right in front of me?” she asked.
A small smile came to his mouth. “Technically, Annabelle, I’m behind you.”
“Smart ass. You can’t expect me to be able to drive while you’re sucking the life out of someone in the backseat,” she said.
“I’m so tired,” he said. She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Please let me have this.”
Now he says please. Once again, she thought about the strangeness of him even asking her permission. He could bite him no matter what she wanted. She just wasn’t sure she could focus on driving in a straight line with that going on in the backseat.
“How long is this going to take?” She at least wanted to have a timeline.