by L. L. Ash
Rory the werewolf’s hands tightened into fists.
The man paces slowly in front of me before stopping and looking me in the eye.
“So, my Dear. What shall it be? Will you tell me where the brothers are?”
I only knew where I’d last seen them. But I’d not had conversations with Clarence in so long that I didn’t actually know where he lived. I didn’t know if he stayed in LA or just traveled here. He’s said LA was his home away from Europe but it was still only a guess.
“Time, my Dear. You do not have much of it.”
“I don’t know,” I said finally, mostly the truth.
The man’s face lit up like a child on Christmas morning.
“Refusal, I hear?” he questioned, looking to Rory and the other, silent man in the back of the room.
“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Rory answered.
The man actually clapped his hands together, grinning before turning back to his leather satchel. I saw him remove a jar of neon green looking liquid, then with his other hand he retrieved a syringe.
“Oh, I’m so glad for your stubbornness, Child. I shall enjoy this immensely.”
Taking the syringe, he put it the jar and pulled out a pea-sized amount.
I saw Rory wince as the needle was extracted from the jar and the man took a couple of steps forward with it, holding it up for me to see.
“You see, this is a potion of my own creation. I’ve been making it for centuries, and it has worked on vampire, werewolf and human alike. Pain is pain, child, as you will soon see.”
He bent at my side and inserted the needle into my skin with a prick, then pressed the plunger down and emptied it. It started out like a tingle, a strange, uncomfortable tingle. Then a warm sensation flowed up my arm. Suddenly there was burning, itching, like ants crawling through my veins. The sensation spread from my arm to my chest, then down my legs and to my toes. Within a minute my entire body felt like it was on fire. I wriggled in my seat, trying to ease the intensity of the burn, but more minutes of agony passed before it began to ease.
“It never grows old,” the man said, clapping his hands together slowly.
Heading back to his tools he looked up and asked absently, “Do you wish to speak now, child?”
I sputtered nothing for a moment before repeating, “I do-n’t...know...”
He grinned and put the needle back in the jar. He pulled out a larger amount this time, filling the needle a couple of inches instead of the pea sized amount.
“Last chance,” Rory said quietly. “Remember, squeal.”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “We broke up, I really don’t know where he is.”
“Nonsense!” the man said loudly, stopping the conversation. “Now, let the fun begin!”
He came back to me with the syringe and pressed it in my skin again before I felt the intense tingle immediately, turning to an aching burn within a second. The intensity was one hundredfold of the pain before. It elicited a scream from the bottom of my fiery lungs.
My heart felt like it was going to melt out of my chest and my ribs cinched up tightly so I could hardly breath. I panted, as if trying to cool off, and my entire body covered in sweat within a second.
The man watched with a grin, and Rory flinched with every moan of agony that pealed from my lips.
When it eventually started to ease, I took in big, heaving breaths. My head was foggy and my brain felt like it’d turned to mush. I couldn’t put together a cognate thought, let alone try to think of a way out of my situation.
“Would you like to speak now?” the man asked.
I repeated my answer.
Another draw of the syringe and another shot of liquid fire.
I didn’t hold back my screams this time. I squealed all right. I screamed, hoping to break their ear drums with my agony. Rory moved, pacing around the room and the man just leaned back against the table and watched with a happy look on his face.
Trying to catch my breath again as the fire eased off, I began to cry. Against every will of my body, tears flooded out of my eyes and I started to sob in front of my captors.
The man rolled his bag back up, tucked it under his arm and headed for the door followed by the silent man before turning, looking at Rory.
“Have you grown a heart, werewolf?” he asked in a clipped tone.
“Hardly,” Rory answered and followed them out.
The room plunged into darkness and I was left to my own tears.
Hours spanned between visits, but every visit the man had a bottle of the neon liquid and was generous with his dosage. After they left and the worst of it wore off, I would cry myself to sleep, waking only for it all to happen again. I’d lost track of days, and I’d lost most feeling in my body. They gave me enough IVs to survive, but fed me nothing and gave me nothing to drink. My stomach ate itself from the inside out, and my aching limbs soon turned cold and numb from my inability to move.
It was when I tried to move my toes and couldn’t that I realized that I would die there. They didn’t care if I did permanent damage to my extremities, sitting and tied down to the chair. They intended to kill me once they were done torturing me. The vampire got some kind of sick joy out of watching me scream and squirm, and as every day passed and no news or idea of where Clarence or Eddie were, I had given up hope of my rescue.
That was, until I saw another person. A woman.
A beautiful slip of a woman entered the room, turning on the blazing lights that always blinded me for a minute. I blinked away the soreness in my eyeballs before meeting hers across the room.
“I hear you,” she said quietly. “Every day, they come down and I hear you screaming.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant it in a sad way or an entertaining way. Her voice was pretty emotionless.
“Who are you?” I asked in what little of a voice as I could grind out of my parched throat.
“I am Evelyn,” she said in an even voice, watching my face to see if I recognized the name.
But my brain was in no place to remember anything, so I just stared at her blankly.
“Me and my men ran you off the road many months ago.”
Ah, HER.
“What do you want?” I rasped.
“I came to see you.”
She took a chair out from under the table and sat across from me, her trouser-clad legs crossed elegantly, one over the top of the other. Not so different from how Mason sat, actually.
“Do you not know who I am, then?” she asked, crossing her arms across her small chest.
“I dunno...”
“I am their mother,” she said quietly. “Mason, and Clarence. I am their sire.”
OH… Oh shit...
“Did you come to kill me?”
She laughed a gentle, tinkling laugh. Her smile spread charm all across the damp, stoney room.
“No, Darling. Not to kill you. Quite the opposite, actually. I came to save you.”
My heart started pumping faster and my brain attempted to clear to properly judge whether or not she was playing me or being truthful. The idea that the woman I’d heard nothing but horrors about would go against her master and save me didn’t sit right, but at that point, I didn’t have much choice but to trust her.
“How?”
“I need something,” she said quietly. “A token I can bring to them, so they know I’m truly about your business. They do not trust me, for very good reason. I have to somehow prove that I’ve changed my mind. That my heart has softened.”
I thought for a minute. Everything in my brain screamed not to trust her, but my gut, Dear God my gut told me to believe her.
“My necklace,” I said in a whisper. “He knows the significance of it.”
“Your necklace?” Evelyn got up from her chair and touched the ruby beads and cross. “A gift?”
“Not from them. From my mother.”
Evelyn nodded and reached behind my neck to unclasp it.
“This is very d
ear to you, than? I know your mother is gone.”
I nodded.
“Then I shall care for it gently and leave it in the proper hands. Where shall I take it?”
Now, here was the hard part. I didn’t know how to find Clarence, but I knew one person who did.
“Eddie, at the wolf’s lair knows how to find Mason and Clarence.”
“I know the place.”
“Take it to him. He knows what the necklace means.”
She nodded and pocketed my most valuable possession in the world.
“Wait,” I called quietly after her as she started to leave the room. “When you see him… Tell Eddie...”
Tell him what? We didn’t have a secret code or some kind of panic word.
“No,” I corrected, knowing what to say. “Tell Clarence that when this is all done and you save me, I want chocolate covered strawberries.”
She tilted her head in curiosity.
“And he will understand this?”
“Yes.”
She nodded quickly and opened the door.
“Just survive, Darling. I will work as quickly as I can to bring them to you.”
She flicked the light off and closed the door behind her as she left.
Anxiety swirled through me like never before. I either just saved myself, or killed every person left on earth that I love.
“Have you the inclination to talk?” the man asked, back for another visit. “Or shall we just listen to you scream again?”
My voice was completely gone now. My throat so dried out and my tongue so swollen I could hardly breathe, let alone scream.
He sighed happily and pulled out his chosen implement of torture.
“Fine then, I shall have entertainment. You shall die soon, so do not fret, Dear. You only need suffer while you still breathe.”
For that moment, and only in that moment, I wished that I could just stop breathing. That I could just die and be over the pain, the thirst and the hunger.
The fire consumed. Every cell of my being lit and burned with his liquid fire. My body gave up and I just dropped forward, pulling against my tied wrists as the pain took over. It was an almost out of body experience. The pain melted away and I could feel myself levitating. I was weightless…
Scuffling outside the door broke me out of the trance my agony had begun.
The man frowned immediately and turned to Rory and the other man.
“Find out what is happening.”
Both men left through the door and I heard a definite confrontation happening on the other side. The man silently went back to his trusty leather roll and fussed for a moment before unsheathing a large, foot long knife.
He took slow, measured steps toward me before saying, “It looks as though our time has been cut short, my child. My fun has ended, but at least for you, your agony has, as well.”
Crouching in front of me, he touched the blade to his lips and tapped the flat of it gently there for a moment.
“No matter. It seems I have your beaus now, both of them.” He removed the blade from his lips and touched the tip to my stomach, just above my belly button.
“A little gift from me to you,” he smiled a friendly smile, but his eyes were cruel and evil. “A little more pain, a little more agony before you leave this world.”
He plunged the blade into my guts, and I felt it drag through my organs, creating a sucking vacuum effect so it sat there, plunged into me.
The man smiled gently.
“Die in anguish, dear girl.”
He stood and began to head toward the door, but it suddenly burst open with a flood of fur and claws and growls. The man was swarmed by the beasts, his screams heard, echoing in my ear as they tore him apart, limb from limb. Another figure approached and the werewolves backed off, leaving room for the human-walking beast. He dropped down to all fours before exposing his teeth to the disembodied head and abdomen before clamping his jaws around the vampire's neck and snapping, snarling, and eventually tearing it off his neck. The head rolled across the floor, finding a hiding place under the table. His cold dead eyes were truly dead and hollow now.
The werewolf who snapped the man’s head off turned to me, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew who it was. The wolf bounded over to me, saw me and began whimpering and licking me.
“Get away!” a strong voice came through my death-clouded mind. Clarence.
He was suddenly kneeling in front of me as my head sank. Loss of blood was finally going to be the thing that killed me.
“No… no no no no,” Clarence said frantically, taking in the sight of the dagger and my overall almost dead appearance.
Eddie snapped the ropes binding my limp and lifeless hands and Clarence took me in his arms, laying me out on the stone floor.
“No Addie. Don’t you do this. You can’t leave me...” Clarence touched my face and his touch fluttered down to the knife protruding from my stomach.
Color began to fade and my body became cold. So cold.
Clutching the knife he pulled it out, the blade leaving hardly a sting in its wake.
“God forgive me...” Clarence whispered before slicing open my arm then dragging the blade across his, pressing the two wounds together.
Eddie snarled and growled at him, but Clarence pushed him away, taking my head in his hands gently, laying my body across his lap.
Color was gone, and my eyes stopped seeing. Darkness clouded my vision, and then everything, everything was black.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Darkness. Still darkness. I was in hell. I had to be. My eyes opened but there was no difference between open and closed. I could see nothing.
It was too cold to be hell. I felt a bitter numbness over my skin as I tested the use of my hands. They were no longer useless. I had to be dead. Heaven maybe? No, Heaven wouldn’t be so cold and dark.
Reaching my hands out, I felt the sides of what had to be a box. I was buried. Buried like Mom. This was my casket. But how was I alive?
Was I alive?
I touched the top of the box and pushed, having this awful vision of being awake and buried alive somewhere.
The top of the box opened and light streamed in as the cold air escaped. I dropped the top again, but in a second the top was being lifted and brightness flooded me, blinding me again. I hated light…
“Addie?” a voice called to me, a familiar one.
My throat was still dry and parched, but I managed to grate out, “Clee?”
Hands reached down and helped me to sit up, my body still feeling weak and tired.
“You’re alive?” he choked, touching my face and searching my eyes.
“I am?”
He chuckled in a teary manner, though no wetness was anywhere to be found.
“Addie...I’m so glad you’re awake… I was so worried about you.”
“Why am I so cold?” I asked, feeling the coldness on my skin. “And how long have I been asleep?”
His face contorted in pain and he took my hands, pressing them to his lips with closed eyes.
“I’m so sorry Addie...Please forgive me...”
“What happened.”
“You were dying,” he choked, “There was no other way to save you. If I’d have hesitated one more moment you’d have died.”
“What did you do?” Fear gripped my spine like an icy fist.
“I turned you...” he took a sharp breath, as if preparing for my backlash.
I said nothing, did nothing. It hurt too much to move, to speak.
He opened his eyes again and looked at me, searching me.
“You need blood...” he whispered.
“I’m so thirsty,” I managed to tell him.
“Stay here,” to admonished, putting my hands down. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He was gone in a flash, and back in a flash, a tall glass of red liquid in his hand.
“You must drink, Addie.”
My swollen tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I reached for
the glass with shaking hands. He helped me get it to my lips before I wrapped both hands around it, guzzling the thick, salty liquid like I hadn’t drunk in days. Actually, I HADN’T drunk anything in days.
“More,” I told him after emptying the glass.
“Be patient, let it settle,” he said in a gentle voice, stroking my hair back out of my face.
I felt it from my stomach. The cold liquid coated it with a comforting caress before I started to feel the strength returning. Tingling like I’d felt before while healing spread through me. My body was repairing itself and I could feel every atom and every molecule vibrating, rearranging.
“It feels so...”
“I know,” he interrupted, stepping into the cold box with me and putting his arms around me as I healed.
Minutes. Minutes was all it took before I felt good as new. No lingering effects from my past torture or holding lingered on my skin or in my muscles. The dark bruises around my wrists disappeared and my skin turned creamy white. Perfect.
“Wow...” was all I managed to get out.
Clarence rested his chin on my shoulder, holding me tightly as I sat there.
“I feel better,” I told him, my voice whole again like the rest of me. “I feel...great.”
He nodded and kissed my shoulder through my shirt before looking at me again.
“Do you still want more?”
“Yes. I’m so hungry.”
“Then come. There are some people here that are very eager to see you.”
Clarence stood, holding his hand out to help me step out of the box. Now that my head was clear again, I looked down at the box and saw it for what it was. It was a big, fancy version of a freezer. The box was big enough to hold two with a tight squeeze, and the mattress on the bottom filled it from corner to corner, with sheets and pillows accompanying it.
“This is your bed?” I asked, taking his hand and stepping out.
He nodded.
“This city has luxuries that not many other places have.”
I nodded and followed Clarence out of the plain room. We seemed to be in an apartment. A hallway led to what I assumed to be more rooms, and likely a bathroom. Clarence led me out to the living room where a host of people were sitting, gathered around on couches and drinking either mugs of what smelled like coffee, or tall glasses of the same red substance I’d drunk that I refused to associate with blood.
