Thirst

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Halo was much more earthy than that. Women were women—food or otherwise. They had all the necessary parts that made them women. Vampire snobbery was just that…snobbery. Vampires who looked down on him for his habit of fornicating with human women could bite his rock hard ass. Or they could try. The bonus about being the best in the hunting biz was that no one dared say anything to his face about his choice in sleeping partners. Hell, they didn’t even dare say it behind his back for fear it would get back to him. Oh, there were those who weren’t afraid of him, those who dared, but he couldn’t care less about them if he tried. And he was always up for popping someone in the face for being a gutsy wiseass.

  Halo sat up and the room spun. That was definitely not a good thing. He looked around again and noticed the room was a bit Spartan for a woman’s bedroom. There was the queen sized bed he was lying on, a pair of recliners in front of a wall-mounted television, and a small round table with two chairs pulled up to it. He would have thought he was in a studio apartment, but there was no kitchen. There was a single door leading out of the room, which meant there were no closets. That must utterly suck, he thought. He may be a low-class hunter, but he had ultra cool digs and the money to furnish it with everything he wanted…like an enormous flat-screen TV that put the one on the wall to shame.

  Actually he had four TVs. But who’s counting?

  He threw back the cover hat had been tossed haphazardly over his hips and realized he was naked. He looked around the room, but there were no clothes to be found.

  Now he was just irritated. He got to his feet and again the room spun, only this time it seriously rocked him and he sat back down again as nausea rushed over him. He swallowed hard against it then got back up. He gritted his teeth against any further lurching of his stomach and staggered to the door leading out of the room. He yanked it open and found it led to a bathroom.

  Blinking in confusion he rechecked the walls of the box room for another door. There wasn’t one visible. There was one window covered by heavy floor-to-ceiling drapes and another long high one that ran the length of the room on the east side allowing that damnable sunlight into the room. It was barely six inches in height…if that. So he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling drapes, thinking maybe there was an exit behind them. A porch slider or something. But when he pulled the curtains apart they revealed what had once been a window but was now completely bricked in.

  “What the fuck?”

  Halo felt a sense of dread invade him as he stared at the freshly blocked-off portal. He placed a hand against it and pushed, checking to see if there was any give, any way to get out. It didn’t budge and his feeling of dread intensified. As did his anger. He was pissed. Mad pissed. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, someone was going to die. Painfully. Slowly.

  Twice.

  He left the window and began to pace the outer perimeter of the room. It didn’t take him long to find the seam of what appeared to be a door over on the south side of the room near where the table and chairs were set up. It also didn’t take him long to realize there were cameras in all of the upper corners of the room, protected by clear, thick plastic bolted into the walls.

  He ignored the cameras for the moment and examined the seam to the hidden door. He pushed at the drywall covering it and knocked on it. It was solid. No sound of an echo or a hint that there might be hollow space behind. He continued all along the walls searching for any hollow sound only to be frustrated by the lack of it.

  He still didn’t consider himself in trouble, however. It would take much more than a sealed room to make him panic. Okay, so a sealed room and being naked and watched was pushing his comfort level, but he wasn’t known for being easily ruffled. What he needed to find out was who had put him there, how he had even gotten there, and what the person’s endgame was.

  “All right,” he said aloud to the cameras. “You have my attention. What the fuck do you want?”

  He waited, glaring up directly into one of the cameras.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  After about ten minutes without a response he began to get antsy. He looked around the room and took in his surroundings again. What caught on his attention was that there were two recliners and two chairs at the dining table. That meant someone was eventually going to join him…whether it be his captor or someone else. He discarded the information as unimportant for the moment. He walked over to the little table between the two recliners and picked up the remote that was sitting on it. He clicked on the TV and it blinked on. To a screen split into quarters. Four different angles into a room as exactly square as his was. In fact, the room was so identical it could have been his…except in this room was a woman.

  She was sitting in one of the recliners in her room, naked, with her legs drawn up tightly to her chest. The picture was in black and white, so all he could tell was that she had dark hair and was white skinned…or so it seemed. It wasn’t as though he could see gradations of skin tone. But she definitely wasn’t black.

  “Please…”

  That was when he realized he could hear in the room as well as see.

  “Please tell me what you want!” she yelled.

  She was crying. He heard her breath hitch and saw her wipe away tears. Damn it she looked scared to death. Who was she? He could imagine all kinds of reasons as to why he had been taken captive, but he couldn’t imagine why she would have been. He knew nothing about her. He had never seen her before in his life. The picture was not exactly big or clear so he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but he was almost positive she was a stranger. She wasn’t his type—she was far too pretty to be his type. He liked them mediocre and desperate. Made things easier. Pretty women expected too much.

  But she was his favorite body type. Full. Round. Plump. Had he been in a bar under the right circumstances he might have forgiven her her prettiness and gone for her anyway. So maybe she was more his type than he thought. Still, he preferred blondes. Washed-out though they may be, he had a thing for blondes. This woman had dark or black hair…he couldn’t tell which.

  She was curled up into herself, hiding her nakedness as best she could. He glanced over at his bed and wondered why she didn’t cover up with a sheet. He narrowed his eyes on the screen and was able to determine that she didn’t have sheets on her bed.

  That angered him for some reason. Bad enough they had trapped her like a rat and were watching her, they couldn’t allow her a little dignity?

  She reached out for the remote on the table beside her and flicked on the TV. He watched as she dropped her legs, stood up and reached out to touch the TV screen.

  “Hello! Hello can you hear me?” she cried.

  “I can hear you,” he said aloud, guessing that he was on her screen just as she was on his.

  “Oh my god! What’s happening? Why are they doing this to us?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, frowning darkly. “How long have you been here?”

  “A day. At least.” She then seemed to realize he could probably see her and she hurried back to the chair where she could hide her nakedness behind her own legs. “You weren’t there last night. Last time I turned on the TV the room was empty.”

  He absorbed the information. It seemed right. Last night he had been at a bar doing god knows what with god knows who. It was all a little fuzzy.

  “Yeah. I just woke up. Have you seen anyone? Talked to anyone?”

  “No. And I’m really hungry.”

  That gave him pause. It had been four days since he’d last fed. He could usually go a week between feedings, but that time was shortened the more he drank. He didn’t suppose the girl was a vampire. Vampires didn’t get as scared as this girl was unless they were facing down a sycophant.

  Law-abiding vampires drank energy from clean resources—humans who engaged in healthy or organic lifestyles. Humans who did not pollute themselves with drugs or other unhealthy things. Sycophants, or phants, were not anywhere near as disc
erning. They fed from anything and everything, searching for the cheap high of feeding off a junkie or some other such thing. Any law-abiding e-vamp could become a phant, but no phant could cross back over the line and become law abiding. Once they were lost they were lost forever. Or pretty much.

  Still she could be a vampire. Maybe a weaker one. But he couldn’t tell through a monitor and he wasn’t about to ask her. Keeping themselves hidden from the human world was paramount on the list of vampire to-dos. Giving themselves away in any way was at the top of the to-don’ts.

  “Where do you work?” he asked her. Most vampires in New York City worked at vampire headquarters in Midtown. Maybe by asking her that he could figure out who and what she was.

  “What? What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

  “Humor me.”

  “I work at Felice’s Antiques in Kingston.”

  “Kingston, New York?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Where are you from?”

  “The city,” he said absently. Where was he? Upstate? Still in the city? What the fuck?

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  Niceties. Ok sure, he could do niceties. “Halo.”

  “Like…the game Halo?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a beleaguered sigh. “Like the game.” If he had a dollar…ever since that fucking game came out.

  “I’m sorry. You probably hear that all the time.”

  Well, at least she was keen enough to realize it. And polite enough to apologize. Not that manners meant all that much to him. He did return her niceness for the moment.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s Felice.”

  “As in Felice’s Antiques?” he asked.

  “The one and the same.”

  He absorbed that a minute. A small business owner from upstate New York. What the fuck did a small business owner from upstate New York have to do with a vampire from New York City?

  “Do you have any clue as to why you are here?” he asked her even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  But she surprised him. “I thought it was my stalker ex-husband. It seemed a little high tech and well-thought-out for him, but I don’t know. What do you do? Why would you be here?”

  He couldn’t answer that. Oh, he could think of a half-dozen reasons why, he just couldn’t tell her those reasons.

  “I’m just as in the dark as you are, sister.”

  “Call me Felice. Please. I need someone to call me by my name. To make me feel human again.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Felice,” he said, even though comforting others was not his strong suit. He rather impressed himself with the attempt.

  “Thank you, Halo, but I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “Yeah. I can see how it sounds like total bullshit. But I’m not the kinda guy who lets others get the best of him. If there’s a way out of here I’ll find it. Then I’ll come for you.”

  “How do you know we’re even in the same building? Or even the same state? These could be webcams shooting from anywhere.”

  She had a point. Maybe he wasn’t so good at the comforting thing after all.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll promise you this. If I get out I won’t stop looking for you till I find you.”

  “That’s awful nice of you to say but you don’t owe me anything.”

  “Hey, we’re companions in captivity,” he said, once again walking the perimeter of the room, testing the walls and then the door leading to the room. “Do you have a door leading into your room?”

  “There’s only one door and it leads to the bathroom. Thank god there’s no camera in there…at least not that I can see.”

  “Did you check around the walls? For a door that blends into the wall? I have one here.”

  She sprang up out of her chair and hurried to the nearest wall. “Where?” she asked.

  “On the wall to your right. Try there.”

  She slid along the wall to the one on her right and her hands began to trace over the drywall.

  “Hey! I didn’t see this before!” she cried in triumph. “I figured there had to be a way in. I mean…we got in here somehow. I just couldn’t find it.”

  “It was easy to miss. I only found it by checking every seam in the wallpaper. I gotta give cred to the guy who had the patience to paper this room…even if the floral pattern makes my eyes hurt. But I think that was deliberately chosen to distract the eye from the seams.”

  “You sound like this is nothing new to you. You sound so calm.”

  He supposed he did. It didn’t pay to get worked up. Anger and frustration only clouded his thinking.

  “I’m not about to kick and scream. I won’t give whoever is watching the satisfaction.”

  “So you think they are watching too? That it’s not just us seeing each other?”

  “Of course they’re watching. That’s half the fun isn’t it?” He ran a hand back through his hair—his only sign of agitation. But it was enough for her to notice.

  “I’m sorry. That was a stupid question.”

  “Yeah. It was,” he said.

  “I said I was sorry!” she bit out.

  “All right! So you’re sorry. That doesn’t change things. Look, you have to get a grip. There’s no room for being all soft and apologetic. That won’t get the job done.”

  “What job?” she snapped. “And there’s nothing wrong with being polite. You might try it sometime.”

  “I don’t have time to be polite,” he said. “And the job is getting us out of here.”

  “How are we going to do that? Like you said, someone is probably watching our every—”

  She gasped suddenly and lurched back away from the doorway she was standing near. She scurried over to the chair and ridiculously hid behind it.

  “Someone’s coming!” she hissed.

  “Here’s a clue. They’re going to be able to find you,” he said dryly.

  “Shut up! You’re a real—”

  She gasped, cutting herself off from calling him an asshole. He supposed that was exactly what he was, he thought a moment later as someone all in black opened the portal and stepped inside Felice’s room. Felice screamed as he approached her—and it was a he, Halo could tell by his bulk and the way he moved—and she scrambled to get away from him. But it was no use and Halo knew it, even if in the moment of panic Felice didn’t.

  A second figure entered the room behind the first just as the first, the bigger of the two, grabbed hold of Felice. She screamed and fought, her naked body twisting and squirming. Halo’s fists clenched as he watched every second of what was happening with burning eyes. Now he felt frustration. He wanted to leap through the screen to help her. He wasn’t the type to rescue damsels in distress, but he wasn’t the type to ignore them either.

  This was unbearable for him, terrifying for her. He hardly knew her, but he knew he would do anything to switch places with her.

  “You fuckers!” he shouted at the screen. “Why don’t you come after me?”

  She was a fighter, he’d give her that. She kicked out, catching one of the men in the nuts. He grunted and fell to his knees, cupping his abused privates in both hands. That left the meatier of the two men to control the writhing, screaming woman in his hold. Tired of listening to her, he backhanded her. She immediately went silent as her head snapped back, then hung limply. He’d either knocked her out or she’d fainted, he couldn’t tell which through the screen.

  Now that she was still, the bruiser threw her down on the bed. Halo gripped the remote so tightly he just about crushed it, but he barely kept himself from doing so. He needed it. He needed to be able to watch over her.

  The second man recovered slowly as the bruiser arranged her naked limbs out on the bed. He did something with her arm and then pulled something out of his back pocket.

  A syringe? He couldn’t tell but the actions of the bruiser seemed like those of someone giving a shot or taking blood. He bet on giving
a shot. Something to further subdue her no doubt. The bruiser stood up and faced the camera in the upper north corner of the room. He was masked, so Halo couldn’t identify him.

  “Don’t worry. You’re next,” he said.

  “Just try it, fucker. Be prepared to hurt.”

  “We’ll see,” the bruiser said smugly.

  He plucked his partner up by the shoulder of his shirt and dragged him out of the room. Halo stood staring at the screens, watching her carefully. At least they hadn’t…he’d been afraid they would really hurt her. Rape her maybe. His mind went over dozens of possibilities of ways they could hurt her. He hated every sick thought that entered his mind. He had seen people hurt each other in hundreds of ways. It was what had jaded him so thoroughly. He could imagine every one of those hundreds of ways…spend days imagining them. What did that make him? He didn’t know. However, he did know that she didn’t deserve this. Whatever and whoever she was, she didn’t deserve this.

  He stood there watching over her for an hour or so, waiting every minute for his door to open. But standing there in a state of readiness would quickly become exhausting, so he forced himself to relax. He took a seat on one of the recliners and settled in. He wished he could see her better, see her breathe. Why had they drugged her? If indeed she had been drugged. Obviously it was to prepare her for something. But what?

  Then suddenly the screen blanked out, as if someone had shut off all the cameras. More than likely they had just shut off his access to them. Frustration welled within him as he tried changing the channel. It earned him basic cable, shows he wasn’t interested in, so he flipped back to the screen in case they allowed access to her once more. He wanted to be able to see her the minute they let him do so again. In the meantime he tried not to imagine all the things they could be doing to her out of his sight.

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