by Jade White
“But, right now, we have a clear window of opportunity while they’re sucking their thumbs and licking their wounds. I suggest we take it and get out of here.”
“Is there anything else that we need?” she asked him with a nervous expression on her face. She had never been on the run before and all she could think of was getting stuff for Blake. She hadn’t even taken the time to think about herself. She didn’t know what a person took on the run with them.
“We can get everything for us on the way,” he assured her, looking back out the window one last time. “I’ll grab the bag and I’ll make sure the way is clear. You grab Blake and I’m sure he’ll be much happier with his mother than he will be with his absentee father.”
He was very cavalier about the fact that he had been missing for his son’s gestation and his birth, but there was something about what he was doing right then that told Shawna he wouldn’t do it for anyone else. He wouldn’t risk his life for anyone who was willing to be less than absolutely valuable to him.
Grabbing Blake, she bundled him up and carried him as they left the apartment and she felt incredibly terrified to walk out the door. There was something horrifying and haunting about the world beyond her apartment and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to leave.
It was like there was something terrifying waiting for her and she knew it was going to come for her the moment she blinked. It was like standing in a room where everything was rigged with some kind of buzzer or siren. All she wanted to do was be safe, already.
Victor, however, wasn’t willing to let them sit still. He made his way through the hallway and looked down every corridor or path they came to and led her to the stairs. She was horrified of taking her son down the stairs, but she figured getting pinned or caught in an elevator with a bunch of vampires wasn’t ideal either.
When they made it to the lobby, she saw that William the doorman was missing and that made her extremely nervous, just thinking about what could have happened to him. She looked at the lobby and wondered if there were vampires in the building and if they were harming other people in an attempt to get to her.
Victor hissed at her and tossed his head in the direction of the car he had prepared for them. When they reached the car parked at the curb, she couldn’t help but feel like the city was quieter and that there was nothing around them. There was something about the whole city being filled with darkness and silence as she waited for something to happen. She half expected the vampires to come flying down from the rooftops and charging at them.
The moment she thought of the idea, she was suddenly paranoid it was going to happen. Victor opened the back door for Shawna and she saw that there was a very expensive and very nice car seat waiting for Blake. That made her wonder how long he’d had it and it made her feel a little better just thinking about the fact that he had worried about her.
She wanted him to worry about her and she wanted him to worry about the two of them. It was nice to know he was genuinely thinking about them and that they weren’t just ghosts from his past. She watched him load the bag into the trunk as she buckled Blake into his car seat and quickly hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“We can drive all night,” he told her, but she looked at the clock and saw that it was three in the morning. His eyes followed hers to the central console and looked at the time as well. “It’s not long, but it’s enough to put some distance between us and them. You and Blake can stay in a hotel room and I’ll make sure those things don’t come after us.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but Victor started up the car and headed for the street at full speed. Shawna turned around and looked behind them, seeing figures running as quickly as they could after the car, waving their arms and trying to stop them. She stared at them, wide eyed and full of terror, wondering what had gotten into them and what they could have possibly been thinking to chase after them like that. They were relentless.
The creatures that had chased after them were still back by the side of the street, shrieking and angrily waving their arms, giving up their futile pursuit and heading back to the sidewalk, as if they were going to regroup and think of another plan. She watched them and wondered exactly what their plan was right now.
She wanted to know if there was something they were going to do that was actually going to stop this, or if they were just running blind right now. Something told her they were going to be picking a fight with Victor, but she needed to know. She needed to know that she wasn’t wasting her time with him.
Leaving her apartment behind her, she knew there was a lot she had left. There was a whole life there and potentially a lot of things that were going to make her wish she had been given an honest chance.
Why couldn’t Victor have been a normal man? Why couldn’t he have been someone that was just a deadbeat father? She could have happily dealt with that and gone about her business. That seemed golden right now.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked him, shaking her head at the thought of how screwed up all of this was. There was no way that she was going to recover from any of this. She was going to be left with bombed-out remains of everything that she had to deal with.
“We’ll get out of here and put the city behind us,” Victor said with absolute confidence, not understanding what she was saying to him. He might be hundreds of years old, but she was realizing he needed a lot of work in the reality department. She wasn’t going to be happy with this until she got some legitimate answers.
“What am I supposed to do about my job?” she pressed him. “What am I supposed to do about everything? Greta is going to show up tomorrow and she’s going to think I’m crazy. She’ll probably call the cops.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, shaking his head and checking the rearview mirror.
She didn’t care about what he had to say right now. She was mourning the life that was crumbling all around her. On the bright side, Blake was safe and that was all that mattered right now.
“Keep your eyes open at every intersection,” he said.
No, it wasn’t like he said it to her, but rather that he commanded it. For a moment, she thought to question him and ask him what he meant by that, but she suddenly remembered the men who had come running after them. She looked over her shoulder at Blake and watched behind them.
“This is so messed up,” she said to him, looking over at him and feeling like she had been thrown into some pale guy’s action movie against her will. She wanted to smack him upside the head and tell him to let her go, but she knew he wasn’t holding her here against her will. He was as much of a victim right now as she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her, sounding genuinely sincere in his apology. She found that odd. “None of this should have happened. There’s a rare chance that any vampire ever will reproduce, but you were the unlucky one to have it happen. I wouldn’t have done it to you, Shawna. I’m glad that it happened to you of all people, though. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who is strong enough to handle this situation.”
“We’re going to be discussing this at greater length in the future,” she said to him sharply, but at the time, while she was eyeballing everyone who was on the street and in cars behind them, it felt like a silly time to have this discussion. She could only think about how they were possibly surrounded.
“Fair enough,” he said, nodding to her. “Listen, it’s going to take a couple of hours to get out of the city, if we’re lucky. We’re going to have to be completely paranoid at every intersection we come to and if there’s anyone staring at us with dark eyes, you have to tell me, so that I can get us out of there. I know it’s tense, but until we leave the city, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Fine by me,” she said confidently. There was nothing that was going to please her more than keeping her child safe. She was going to make sure he was absolutely safe and completely fine.
It took more than a few hours to get out of New York City and by the ti
me they were free of the concrete jungle she had once called home, she knew they only had a little while before they were going to have to pull off to the side of the road or find a hotel that they could hole up in for the rest of the day.
The only thing that made her feel comfortable was the fact that their pursuers were going to have to pull off and wait as well. If they were lucky, maybe a few of them would burn up along the way.
There was something about leaving New York that made her feel sad and as she looked behind them at subdivisions that seemed endless and sprawling, she found herself getting into the same habits, time and time again, watching for anyone or anything that might be coming for them.
It was the kind of paranoia she was afraid was going to seep inside her for the rest of her life.
On the interstate, they were really starting to put some distance behind them, heading south, and she didn’t ask him any questions. There was something about him that told her she shouldn’t be asking any questions; she should be totally comfortable with the fact that he seemed to know what he was doing with her. She was going to just trust that he had a plan and they were going to be safe with him.
She felt the fatigue of the night settling in on her and she could only think that there were not enough hours in the night for them to do this. She wanted to know if there was anything they would to be able to do that would put some serious distance between them and their pursuers.
Part of her wanted to go to the airport and get on a plane just at the break of day. They could fly forever, but there was always the risk that someone might open a window and kill Victor if they did that.
“Hang on,” Victor said, breaking the silence after a while. She looked over at him and she saw that he was checking all of the rearview mirrors. She felt a cold chill trickle down her spine and she realized there was something definitely wrong right now. She looked over her shoulder and she knew instantly what was wrong and had captured his attention.
As if they had gone to the same henchmen bad-guy academy together, four motorcycles were coming up toward them, weaving in between cars on the interstate, all wearing leather jackets and jet black helmets. In fact, everything from their clothes to their helmets was clad in black so that they would seem even more vampire-like and menacing. She didn’t like the look of this and she didn’t know what it meant.
“We need to go faster,” she told him.
“We’re running out of time,” he told her nervously. It was the first time that he had exuded any kind of emotion other than confidence and cocky bravado through this entire event. It made her want to really freak out and start to panic.
Heeding her advice, he stepped on the pedal and their car started to go faster and faster, weaving in and out through cars on the interstate, trying their hardest to lose the motorcyclists that were coming up faster and faster behind them. Their street bikes looked like they were faster and they were going to catch up, and for the first time, Shawna wished she hadn’t gone with Victor in the car and stayed at her apartment.
“We really need to go faster,” she said to him nervously, looking over her shoulder and seeing one of them rapidly coming up behind them. He was determined and was going to get them. There was a kind of predatory aura that clung to him and she knew there was something off about him. He was the kind of person who looked like he was going to do anything it took to get his prey.
She watched him and knew he was going to be their first and biggest concern. The others were reckless, but there was a kind of patience and nervousness to them. A couple of them kept looking over their shoulders at the lightening horizon.
They were coming fast and there was no way they were going to be able to outrun them. There was something about their motorcycles that told her they were faster and more dangerous than this car was ever going to be. The fact that they were outrunning them already was alarming and they were gaining on the car faster and faster.
The interstate was never this slow, but there was light traffic this morning and Shawna felt like they might actually have some kind of a chance if they could just get past a few more obstacles. A giant semi was going to be their first obstacle, well, more like slipping between two of them.
The light was coming up on the horizon and she knew they wouldn’t have much more time until there was going to be a beaming ball of sunlight coming up behind the city and that meant it was going to be time up for Victor. She looked up at the sky and she saw that they were unfortunate enough to have a nearly cloudless sky, so there was no long distance chase. They had to end this soon.
“Hang on,” he called to her nervously as he pushed the pedal to the floor and headed between the two semis that were ahead of them. It made her nervous just thinking about going between two trucks, but there was nothing else they were going to be able to do. If they didn’t weave and get between them, there was no way they were ever going to be able to outrun the motorcyclist that was practically on top of them.
A minivan was making its move to get between the two trucks and she felt like their window was closing. Their gap was coming to an end and Victor sped with all the little car had to offer. He swerved in front of the minivan and slipped in behind the two trucks.
There was a loud honk and the minivan swerved, hitting the nearest motorcyclist and she looked over her shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the minivan as it slammed into the side of the pursuing vehicle. It vanished without a sound and they were already between the two semis as the minivan vanished behind the back of one of the trucks.
It was gone with the blink of an eye and she felt her heart pounding, knowing that there was no way that the motorcyclist, who was going around ninety miles per hour, could have survived that. He was gone for good.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, looking at the wreckage that was no doubt behind them and then decided to look away. There was nothing but open road in front of them and it was time for them to make their final move.
They were going to get between the trucks and hopefully that would mean the other three motorcyclists would be caught up by the Honda that was coming up to squeeze between the gap as well. She looked at the open road ahead of them and she knew that they were almost safe.
They could practically taste victory, but something was sour in her stomach and there was something definitely off about it. They had just killed something. She didn’t know if Victor and his kind were technically alive, but whatever that thing was, it was no more.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got two more making for the gap.”
The semis could tell that there was something strange happening and as two motorcyclists clad in black slipped in front of the Honda, which pounded its horn angrily. They honked their horns, blaring loudly at the motorcyclists that were not trapped between the two trailers.
“Hang on,” Victor said.
Before she could actually hang on, she felt the car come to a halt and there was a loud bang on the back of the car as one of the motorcyclists vanished without a trace and the second flew over the top of the car, landing on the hood as Shawna screamed in horror at the sight of what was happening.
She looked at the man, rolling over and clawing at the hood, trying his hardest to get a hold of the hood of the car and as the person clawed at the hood of the car, she watched his legs vanish. She was screaming louder than she actually thought she was and she had no idea what happened.
She watched as a cloud of gray exploded on the front of the car and a helmet rolled off the hood, vanishing around the side as the car sped up and headed as quickly as it could from between the two trucks. Victor flipped on the windshield wipers and tried his hardest to get rid of the ash that was covering the front of the car.
The windshield was tainted in a gray hue as the last motorcyclist gave up, deciding that there was no way that it was going to get through the two trucks and there was no way it was going to get Victor or his child. She felt her heart racing, pounding as she looked behin
d them and watched the scene vanish into the distance.
Victor was driving as fast as he could, now racing against something other than the motorcyclists. She didn’t understand if these people had died or if there was something more to vampires, but she was definitely shaken and terrified by what it all meant.
Everything she had heard about vampires, especially from Victor, she had taken with a grain of salt, but that man had just turned into dust. That wasn’t normal and that wasn’t what people did. She began to panic and realize that she was in way over her head.
“We’re in trouble,” he said after a moment, breathing heavily and squinting as he looked up toward the sky. She didn’t know what he was talking about and then suddenly she remembered the sunlight. There was going to be bright light shining all over this area in the next couple of minutes and it was only going to get brighter and brighter. She didn’t know what they were going to do. She didn’t know how they were going to handle it.
