by D. N. Hoxa
I reached for the one stuck in my thigh, and pulled it out, barely. The pain in my leg started to disappear fast because I’d fed the night before. Now, I just had to get the one stuck in my liver, and I’d be fine.
Where the hell was Chandra when I needed her?
A few minutes later, I finally took the small knife out and fell to my knees. It was going to take a while until my strength returned to normal, but at least I could walk straight. My jacket and pants were ruined. My closest house was three hours away. I wasn’t going to steal anything, so that only left buying new stuff.
I dragged my feet until I could walk normally to one of my favorite shops in Florence, North Carolina. The owner, an almost sixty-year-old woman, had seen me torn and bleeding more than once, so she wouldn’t mind.
She did look at me with her thin, grey brows narrowed as I chose a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a new black jacket. It wasn’t as good as the one I’d gotten in New York, but it would do.
“Trouble in the streets again?” she asked me when I came out of the dressing room, looking like a normal guy again. The pain had completely vanished. I was all myself.
“Same as always, Nancy,” I said, grinning. I paid her almost twice what the clothes cost me. That was why she never minded the blood.
“You’ll have to be more careful now,” Nancy said as she folded the dollars and put them in the pocket of her green dress. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Grinning, I winked at her, and walked out. I’d shopped there for the past ten years, and she knew very well that I never looked any different. She knew something wasn’t right with me. She just had no idea what.
I looked around me, wondering where she would go looking for me. I’d left her about a week ago. It was my turn to disappear this year. I headed east and walked until the crowd began to lessen, then disappear all together.
I made it to Myrtle Beach some time after midnight. I’d never gone swimming there before, but I did mention to Chandra that I wanted to, once. I hoped for her sake that she remembered.
The beach was amazing. There were a couple of people around, all of them couples, sneaking out of their homes to meet in secret. I could tell by the fast beating of their hearts. I loved this part of the country the most.
I took my new clothes off and went into the water. Swimming for a vampire was the most relaxing thing in the world. The water held us up no matter what happened, because we were dead by definition. I looked at my body where the silver knives had been. No sign of them there.
The vampire had come onto me when I had least expected it. I’d heard him, smelled him, but I thought he would mind his own business. He attacked me instead, and before I sent him flying to the other side of the street from the alley, he managed to stick two silver knives in me. Stupid asshole. Those bitches hurt.
Not long after, I heard her slowly walking into the water, and I grinned. She’d remembered, and she’d found me. I was still ahead, because last year, when Chandra disappeared and I chased her, I found her after three nights. She’d needed six. I kept my back turned to her and waited until she wrapped her arms around my waist and kissed my shoulder.
“What are the odds,” she said. “I want to go for a swim, and you’re the first vampire I see.”
I turned around and pulled her with me under the water. Since we didn’t need to breathe, we could stay there for as long as we wanted.
Her red hair flew around her head as she grinned, and kissed me. She knew as well as I did what this meant. I was the winner for this year, too, so I was going to decide where we spent the next. I was thinking Italy, but I wasn’t sure yet. I loved the games we played. There was no better way to decide where to live next.
We kissed under the water for a long while before we came up again.
“What took you so long?” I teased her.
“Don’t fool yourself, Hammer. I let you win.”
I laughed. “Keep telling yourself that, darling.”
“I did. I let you win, and in the meantime, I got a lot of shit done.”
My smile faltered, and she saw it. “What shit?” She loved secrets. I hated them.
“Nothing you’ll like,” she said, and she started to swim back to the beach. “Come on. I’ve got a little something special for the winner tonight. The sun’s almost here.”
I knew she’d tell me herself eventually. With Chandra, the more you asked, the less chance you had of her telling you. I’d been with her for too long to fall for her bait. So I kept my mouth shut.
We went back to the house we bought when we first came to South Carolina, and we spent the remaining hours locked in the bedroom.
When I woke up, she was gone.
Someone else was in the room. Someone who had a beating heart and a gun filled with silver bullets directed right at my head.
“Good evening, Hammer,” the man said.
The shock passed and panic started to drown reason in my head. He was human. He was in my bedroom. And Chandra was nowhere in sight.
“Where is she?”
“Where is who?” the man said.
“The woman that was here with me,” I hissed.
“There was nobody here when we came,” the man said. His heartbeat stayed the same. He was telling the truth.
I sighed in relief. At least she’d gotten away.
“And how exactly did you get here?” I began dressing. I was naked because I’d been inside Chandra until the sun was up in the sky.
“We’ve been following you for some time,” he said. “I’m Detective Sharps, and the others outside the door are my team.” There were another fourteen hearts beating outside the door. There was no way in hell he was telling the truth about who he was, but I played along.
“What can I help you with, Detective?” I asked, and after I was fully dressed, I went to sit across from him. The blood that rushed in his veins was distracting. I could come up with about a hundred different ways to sink my teeth in his neck. The silver from the night before had taken almost all of my blood while I healed. I gritted my teeth and stayed put.
“I need you to come with me, Hammer,” Sharps said.
“Why would I do that?”
His heartbeat was steady. It didn’t look like he was preparing to do anything with the gun in his hands. It gave me some reassurance.
“Because there are some things, important things we want to talk to you about.”
That’s when I smelled the badge in the pocket of his navy jacket. He wasn’t lying. He was really a detective. I stood up. How could a detective know what I was?
“Why are there silver bullets in your gun?”
He stood up, too. “Because silver is the only thing that works against your kind.”
What the hell? “My kind?”
“The vampire kind,” Sharps said, and smiled. “We know about you, Hammer.”
I started to laugh. “We? Who is we?”
“The Government of the United States of America,” he said, and my laughter vanished.
This wasn’t right. He was telling the truth. Nobody knew about us. Nobody, especially not the government.
“I’m going to ask you—nicely—to get the hell out of here,” I said.
“I know how this might seem to you, but like I said, we’ve been following you for a long time, and we really just want to talk to you.”
“Cut the bullshit, Detective. Why did you wait for me to wake up? You could’ve shot me while I was out.”
I walked closer to him until the barrel of the gun pressed against my chest.
“I told you, we don’t mean you any harm. I swear to you, we just want to talk to you.”
“I’ll be damned…” I whispered, too low for him to hear. He was telling the truth. Humans lied, but their bodies never did. They let out a strange scent, and this one smelled nothing like it.
“We won’t take up too much of your time.”
“What do you want to talk to me about?”
“
I’d like to get somewhere safe first—”
“Trust me, other than your team, nobody else is close enough to hear us.”
His brows raised as he looked around the room. After a few seconds, he sighed.
“We need your help, Hammer.”
***
I fell on the ground on my stomach. The memory let go of me at the same second the vampires did. I couldn’t keep myself upright, and I had no idea where we were.
They’d taken me somewhere inside. Underground. Stone walls were around me. I wanted to raise my head, but I couldn’t. They—whoever the vampires were—took the silver knives out of me.
I gritted my sharp teeth to keep from screaming. The pain didn’t die as fast as I expected it to. But then again, when I’d first been hit with a silver bullet, the pain hadn’t completely died until I’d fed.
Where the hell had they taken me?
A door closed to my side, but it was a long time before I could move my arms and get rid of the bag they’d put on my head. I took the mask off, too.
They’d put me in an empty room. Nothing was in there. Absolutely nothing. Just four stone walls and me.
I barely sat up while I looked for a way out. The memory I had was still fresh in my head. Chandra. I’d seen Chandra. I knew what she looked like now. I’d kissed her. Felt her. Had sex with her. I remembered everything as if I’d done them all myself.
I tried to think the way Hammer had thought when the humans had found him. He’d taken one look around and knew exactly how to get out. The window, the door, the knives he had in the nightstand drawer. The humans couldn’t have possibly caught him.
I looked around me, but I found nothing I could use to help me get out. My strength was returning, but without blood it never would completely.
The sun was minutes away from rising. How long had they dragged me? Did the others know?
I could only hope they’d run, just like I told them to. Just like I should’ve done when I heard them coming.
XXX
I’d never been more thankful for unconsciousness than that night. I never wanted it more when it left me the next.
I was still in pain. My flesh smelled. It was terrible. I barely managed to drag myself to the wall across from the door to rest my back against.
When the door opened, Chandra was the last person I expected to see, but she stood in front of me looking exactly the same as she had in my only memory of her.
Her hair was long and red, her face beautiful. She wore an orange dress that made her look like a drawing instead of a person. A vampire.
She smiled when she saw me, like she really was happy I was there.
“Oh, baby…” she whispered and walked with steady steps toward me. She sat down on the ground right in front of my feet and offered me a large glass filled with blood. It was still warm, as if it had just been taken out of the body of its owner.
Reason left my mind. I didn’t care who was watching, or that I didn’t want to fall into any of their traps. I took the glass and drank all of the delicious blood in one sip.
The next second, everything around me became clearer. As soon as the blood filled my stomach and began to travel through my veins, my flesh and skin repaired themselves, and I felt strong.
“I’ve missed you so much.” Chandra leaned closer to me. I stood up.
“You missed me so much that you thought it was okay to kidnap me?” I hissed.
She stood up, too, and smiled brightly.
“I’ve been told I’m weird like that.” She came close to me again and touched my cheek with her fingertips. “You’ve remained exactly the same.”
“As have you.” I jerked my head back.
She nodded. “So it has started.”
What? “What has started?”
“Your memories. They’ve started to come back to you,” she whispered and again touched my face with her fingers.
“How the fuck do you know about that?”
She sighed. “That’s no way to talk to your mate, honey.”
“You’re not my mate,” I hissed. “What the hell is this place? Why did you bring me here?”
“Because I missed you,” she said. The lie was clear in her eyes, yet I was still inclined to believe her.
“Spare me the bullshit, Chandra.”
“I go by mistress around here.”
“I don’t care!” I shouted. “Tell me where the hell I am.”
“You’re in Brazil,” she said.
“Yes, I know that. Where in Brazil? What is this place?”
“You know, I liked you better without the temper,” she mumbled, and I began to laugh.
“I might’ve been Hammer once, but I’m not anymore. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Just tell me what the fuck you want from me so I can be on my way.”
The next second, she was right in front of me, her body pressed to mine, her hands around my cheeks. “I never stopped loving you, you know that? Not once,” she said, and kissed me. I pushed her back as hard as I could, but she only smiled.
“Stay the hell away from me!”
She was crazy. Completely crazy. Not crazy like when people did crazy things, but really crazy! Her eyes showed it. They looked nothing like the eyes of Chandra from the memory. They’d changed.
“I’m going to have you again, Hammer. Whether you like it or not.”
It sounded like a threat.
“I’d love to see you try,” I hissed. My teeth were already sharp.
“Very well,” she said, disgusted. “Follow me.”
She knocked on the door once, and the vampire waiting outside opened it.
I followed her eagerly. She’d taken me right where I wanted to be. If I could figure out what she was planning to do, I could help Morta out. Maybe we would even have a chance.
The hallways were all made of stone, with small lights in the ceiling every few feet. Doors, same as the one they locked me behind, were on both sides of us.
Chandra led us to a wide stairway, and I followed her up. The doors opened, and we were inside the largest room I’d ever seen. It was like a whole house without any separating walls. There was a lounge room right in the middle, a large bed in the corner, huge chairs, three of them at the head of the room, and a table filled with fruit on the other side. Almost everything in it was red, except for the vampires lining the walls. They were all dressed in black.
Aside from them, there was only one other vampire in the room, sitting on one of the big velvet couches. Ignis.
“There he is,” she said, grinning.
It felt like a different world in there. There were five big chandeliers filled with small candles on the ceiling. They cast dancing shadows everywhere.
“Go on, bring him another glass of blood. He might need it,” Chandra said.
“Of course, Mistress,” Ignis said, and bowed her head slightly, but her eyes never left mine. “Vampirism becomes you,” she whispered as she passed me.
“Hammer, come, take a seat,” Chandra said, and patted the red couch next to her.
I walked slowly. I had no idea what to expect. I sat on the couch opposite of her, and she only grinned.
“Doyen won’t be long now. In the meantime, tell me everything you remembered,” she said, batting her lashes at me.
“Doyen?” I asked. “Mohg’s coming here?”
“Yes, of course. We’ve been waiting for you for a while now,” she said and winked.
“Waiting?”
Who else knew about where we were headed? The answer showed itself to me when the door opened again. Ignis walked in with another glass of blood in hand, and behind her was Bugz. I’d stood up without realizing it as I watched her. She’d betrayed me?
“Bugz…” I said, shaking my head, because it couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe it.
“M, this is for your own good,” she said.
“For my own good?” I couldn’t even shout. “I trusted you.”
She didn’t look sorry
. Ignis came to sit next to Chandra, but Bugz stayed behind them.
“Well, this is awkward,” Chandra said, but she was smiling in delight.
“How could you, Bugz?”
I just wanted to know how. She’d been my friend. She’d been Hammer’s friend for centuries.
“I’m going to help you, M. I told you. In fact, I already have. You’re getting your memories back, aren’t you?”
I started to laugh. “Let me guess. You handed me over to them so they could get my memories back to me?”
“Yes,” Bugz said. “I did what I had to do to protect you.”
“You’re not protecting me, you fool!” I hissed. “You’re betraying me!”
“I’m not betraying you, M. I swear—“
“Don’t even think about it,” I shouted. I couldn’t believe she had the guts to deny it. “What have you done to the others? Where are they?”
“I haven’t done anything to them!” she hissed. “I haven’t done anything—”
“Actually, they’re downstairs, too,” Chandra said, with her index finger raised as if she was asking for fucking permission to speak.
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Bugz said.
“I know. I changed the rules a bit to make it more fun. But don’t worry, as soon as Hammer cooperates, they should be fine,” Chandra said, grinning.
“Wow, Bugz,” I said, laughing dryly. “Way to fucking go. I mean, how…” I was going to ask her how could you again, but then I realized, I had to ask myself that question.
How could I have been so fucking blind?
It had been there, all along. The way she came back, claiming she’d always been there. The “lies” she’d told to Serpiente and the others…they’d sounded like truths to us because they had been. She was taking us to Mohg all along. And Zane…she’d been such a good liar. Brilliant fucking liar.
Suddenly, I wanted to break her skull on the fucking wall. I fell on the couch behind me instead. What was done was done. There was no way to change it. I couldn’t undo her betrayal, or turn back time and think about what was happening around me for once. I had to concentrate on getting out of there.
“What the hell do you want from me, Chandra?”
“We’ll get to that in a bit, love,” she said.
