by Susan Illene
A little of my friend’s inner strength came out in that moment. Most people would think of her as a soft woman, but she had a backbone when it came to those she cared about.
“She’ll be taken care of,” he replied.
“Mel’s my friend. She needs medical treatment. You can’t leave her down here like this!”
Aniya kept arguing until Derrick whispered something in her ear. She stopped yelling at him but continued to sob. He guided her out the door and handed her off to some unseen vampire in the hall. The sniffling went away after that. The vamp must have silenced her, but I couldn’t tell because the door closed after the werewolf came back inside.
The light above cast a shadow on him. His hair had been left down this time and covered the sides of his face. The straight, silky locks gave his features an even harder edge than when they were pulled back.
I braced myself as he came closer with a small vial in his hand. Was he going to drug me now? It wasn’t like I could go anywhere in my condition.
Derrick held the vial to my lips, urging me to drink. The blood had a spicy flavor that didn’t sit too well on my tongue. It had come fresh from a vampire. I jerked away, wanting no part of it, but I didn’t have far to go with the wall behind me.
“You have to drink it before its effect is lost,” he said. “You can’t go to the hospital and your injuries are too severe to survive long without medical help.”
“No,” I croaked out. “I’m not drinking their blood.”
He shook his head and growled at me. “You’re being stupid. Do you want to live or not?”
“I don’t want it.” The idea of it made me nauseous.
“This is for your own good.”
Derrick forced my head back and tipped the vile so it came rushing between my lips. Thanks to my broken nose, my mouth was the only opening I had to breathe. He took advantage of it and clamped my jaw shut. I almost choked on the blood, but managed to swallow. The aftertaste didn’t leave a very pleasant flavor on my tongue.
It didn’t take long to work. The injuries across my body began to heal right away, even down to my toes. The pain intensified in the beginning, as bones reset themselves, forcing me to grit my teeth through it. Derrick took my hand and encouraged me to squeeze his until it was over. I hated needing his reassurance, but it didn’t stop me from taking it.
The process took several minutes. Moans escaped my lips a few times when it got to be too much. In the end, my body had been restored, but the vampire blood wasn’t able to cure my malnourishment. The healing process had left me weak. At least I could finally think with a semi-clear head.
“So what now?” I asked him.
Derrick’s nostrils flared while his brown eyes focused on me. His heightened sense of smell must have picked up on the blood and dried waste that clung to my body. Even my human nose, newly healed, could smell it. Under normal circumstances, the filth covering me would have been horrifying. This situation wasn’t anything close to normal. It still bothered me enough to curl into myself.
He sighed—his annoyance flaring across my senses. It made me wonder what kind of man was behind the impenetrable mask. For being such a tough looking guy, he didn’t seem as bad as expected.
“Now?” he responded in a gruff voice. “We get you cleaned up and ready before Variola comes down.”
“Who’s Variola?” I asked as he pulled me into a standing position. I hadn’t wanted his help, but he didn’t give me much of a choice in the matter.
“She’s the leader for this region. Not a woman you want to anger, which you already have.”
Chapter Eleven
Two hours later my body had been restored to a more presentable state. Derrick returned my clothes, after allowing a warm shower in the basement bathroom. My underwear and bra were tossed into the garbage since they were too soiled to ever be used again, but the rest of my garments were clean and warm. It felt better than I could have imagined.
With some encouragement, Derrick convinced me to eat a warm bowl of beef stew. It had more broth than anything. He swore it’d help me get some of my strength back. I knew he was right. It would take time and a lot of food to get back to normal, assuming they let me live after this and weren’t just toying with me.
I wouldn’t put it past them.
The alpha werewolf had stayed with me after my meeting with Aniya. He’d given me some space to recuperate, but not so much as to allow me to think I could make a break for it. He had an air of displeasure surrounding him that made me wonder if it was directed at me or someone else. His eyes revealed little and his words even less.
He eventually left me sitting in the far corner of my prison, alone and as far from the door as possible. Someone had hosed the room down, removing the filth, but I still made sure to find the cleanest spot before settling in. Derrick had warned me any attempt to escape would put me back in the chains. With the number of sups in this place, I already knew it would be impossible to fight my way out. I was desperate, but not stupid.
When the door opened, two vamps I hadn’t seen before entered. I stood slowly, keeping my eyes on both of them. They had dark skin and short cropped hair, along with matching black pants. Nothing covered their well-toned chests. They could have been twins. Their ages came in at about a hundred years old, so they might have at least been brothers. The woman who sauntered through the door after them grabbed my attention right away.
She had to be the dreaded Variola. Her presence was like poison stinging my senses. She didn’t go with the sophisticated vampire look I expected of a leader and instead leaned more toward the “Queen of the Damned” style. Maybe she’d seen the movie. She was also the vamp-witch I had sensed in the house before.
She stood there in a blatant pose of confidence and sensuality. Black leather pants hugged her hips and legs, and she wore a matching bustier with silver studs. The woman looked more like a dominatrix than a powerful vampire leader and even had a short whip attached to her belt. My eyes shot a quick glance at the chains, which had held me before. I got a good mental picture of what they might be used for under different circumstances.
She flowed forward in steps so smooth I couldn’t be sure if she was touching the ground. Her hand waved the two minions back when they moved to follow her. She studied me with an intent expression. Her black eyes were set in a stern but beautiful face framed by dark hair falling in dozens of tiny braids well past her thin, muscular shoulders, almost to her waist. I got the impression she was a mulatto due to the tint of her skin, which was neither black nor white. It had paled over the four centuries she’d been a vampire but it continued to give away something of her origin.
Variola didn’t bother to breathe until right before she spoke.
“You, little sensor, have caused quite a lot of trouble,” she hissed the words out, reminding me of a snake. “If we’d known what you were sooner, we would have handled your capture quite differently.”
My body shuddered at the pure evilness emanating from her. I stayed silent, not believing she wanted a response anyway.
“Why did you come for your friend, so far from home?” A trace of an accent in her voice led me to believe she may have been from the Caribbean in her youth. I’d had a friend from that part of the world in middle school, who spoke in a similar way, minus the hissing effect. He had picked up an American accent after a couple years, but you could still hear the slight difference in his pronunciation of certain words. At least that guy had been nice, unlike this woman.
“Because that’s what a person should do when their best friend goes missing,” I said.
She laughed. “You would be amazed how many I’ve taken over the years and no one came for them.”
Something told me I didn’t want to know how many, exactly, that had been.
“Not everyone is the same,” I said.
“Perhaps.” She ran her fingers along one of her braids. “That leaves us with what to do with you. You’ve been punished for killing my witc
h, but it could be made into a reoccurring event.”
Variola’s thin lips shaped into a sadistic smile. “Did you enjoy your visit with your friend? She is quite the delectable little morsel. It’s the one reason why I allowed Philip to keep her.”
The bitch.
“I saw her.”
Variola put a hand on her cocked hip. Something about her didn’t seem natural. Most vampires made a point of breathing in public. She didn’t, except to take in air to speak. For someone like me, who had always avoided being around them, it was unsettling. Breathing meant life, something this woman no longer had. At least, not in the normal sense of the word.
“Good. Then you will want to keep your friend alive, yes?”
“I would,” I replied, wondering where she was going with this.
“Smart girl.” She nodded and began speaking in a clipped tone, the hissing no longer present. “There is a job for you. One that suits your abilities and will give me a reason to keep both you and your friend alive. Do you wish to hear it or is dying preferable?”
She asked this question as if the answer didn’t mean the difference between life and death. I leaned against the wall for support, but otherwise tried not to show any weakness.
“Go ahead, tell me.”
She nodded, her braids swaying with the movement.
“Very well. After speaking with an associate of mine in Monterey—you may remember her as Noreen…” Variola paused to give me a knowing look. I didn’t take the bait, not wanting to feed her need for a reaction.
“…we have decided you can be of use to us, despite your troublesome nature.”
It didn’t surprise me that they knew each other. The witch community wasn’t that large—if you cut out all of the imitators. My problem was with the two of them discussing me. The Monterey witch couldn’t be a big fan of mine after getting my knife stuck in her gut. All these years I’d worked hard to stay off the radar. The last couple of weeks had seen that ruined.
“What is it you want me to do?” No point in beating around the bush.
“We want you to find a vampire, one who escaped from us five years ago. We put him under a sleep spell, but haven’t been to locate him since. He’s somewhere in this area. We know he couldn’t have traveled far before the spell went into effect.” Waves of irritation rolled off of her as she said the last part.
My arms crossed. “You put a sleep spell on a vampire but can’t find him. How’d you manage that?”
If venom could have shot from her eyes, I’m pretty sure it would have.
“Don’t worry about how. The spell worked, despite his trying to run from it.” She slapped the wall hard. Dust flew out around her as she turned back to me. I tried to pretend I hadn’t jumped at the show of violence. “He couldn’t have gone more than twenty or thirty miles from here, considering how fast one such as he could move, but someone used magic to cover up his location. Our attempts to find him have failed. You do not suffer our limitations and could give us what we want.” Her eyes gleamed in anticipation.
“What’s to say the same person using magic to hide him didn’t break your spell?”
She shook her head. “This is not possible. It took myself and four witches and warlocks, all very powerful, to put this vampire down. There is no way it could have been broken.”
I couldn’t help but ask. “Would you know if it had been?”
She moved so fast I didn’t even see the blur. One moment she stood five feet away and the next she appeared right in front of me, inches from my face.
“Do not get snide with me, sensor. I will make you regret it. The spell could not have been broken and that is all you need to know.”
She ran a slow finger down the side of my face and throat. It was ice cold. Instinct made me want to turn my head away, but that would expose my neck. I kept my eyes locked on her.
Variola moved her head in closer, forcing my chin to the side. I couldn’t help but swallow. She sucked in a breath at the movement. Her lips pressed against my skin. She ran her tongue in a trail up my neck, leaving faint traces of saliva behind. I clenched my fists, wanting to fight her, but knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
Her voice whispered close to my left ear. “I’ve heard sensor blood can be so sweet in the beginning, before it turns nasty and takes more than it gives. I am too smart to fall for that lure, but remember, a small taste would do little harm, and it could be made rather unpleasant for you.”
I remained quiet, focusing on my breathing. It took all my willpower not to slide away from the witch-vamp. To my relief, she backed off and moved a few feet away, closer to her stoic minions who still hadn’t moved a muscle. They hadn’t bothered to breathe either and could have been mistaken for lifelike statues. She must have cowed them into submission at some point.
Variola’s attention returned to me after a full minute of silence. She’d regained control of her blood lust. I suspected the only reason she didn’t bite me was because she couldn’t be sure she could stop at one swallow. I understood—apple fritters had the same effect on me.
“Will you take the job or not, sensor?”
I rubbed at my neck, wanting to get the icky feeling off. “If I’m going to find this vampire, then you’re going to have to at least give me a few details about him. I need to know what to look for with so many of you in the area.”
Her mouth stretched into a triumphant smile, thinking she had me already. I knew how to play the captor vs. captive game. Hell, that had pretty much been my job as an interrogator—except with the roles reversed. I needed her to believe she was getting what she wanted. It could buy my freedom out of this place.
“Smart of you not to argue further,” she said. “His name is Nikolas and he is almost twelve hundred years old. Comes from England originally. Is that enough?”
I drew short at the name. It sounded like she wanted me to hunt down the same vampire Charlie had mentioned. What was it about this one man that was so important?
“It’s enough.” I nodded. His age and gender was all I really needed. “What do you want me to do once I find him?”
“I’m assigning my second, Derrick, to you. He will accompany you at all times during the search and contact me when the vampire is found. You are to do nothing more than locate him. Is that understood?”
It sounded simple enough, assuming I could achieve my own goals.
“My friend, Aniya, and I will go free after I find him for you. Right?”
Variola stiffened. She’d lived during the time of the inquisition and had to know she couldn’t lie to me. “Find the vampire and your friend will go free, but don’t assume the same for yourself. Not yet anyway. There are many other potential uses for you in the future.”
Damn, there had to be a way around this. I might be able to get Aniya free, but Variola had no intention of letting me go. Would she force me to do other things that could be even worse? I opened my mouth to argue, but she held her hand up.
“No, there will be no negotiating on this. Either you agree to the terms or we can kill your friend right now in front of you—in the slowest and most painful manner possible. Then we will proceed to spend however long it takes to convince you to work for us. The last beating you received is nothing compared to what we could do.”
The expression on her face said she would take personal pleasure in bringing me around to her way of thinking. I looked up at the ceiling, trying to think of a way out, but nothing came to me. It was either sacrifice Aniya, and receive endless torture until I begged to work for them, or skip that and at least gain some freedom.
I couldn’t handle another beating or allow someone else to be hurt because of me. As a former interrogator, I knew what they were doing. We’d studied all the methods, even the forbidden ones since you had to know what you could and couldn’t do legally. It was a common tactic by some countries and groups to use a person the prisoner cared about as a weapon against them. It usually worked, but if all else failed, they could alw
ays resort to violence. I felt fairly certain no one here followed the Geneva Conventions guidelines for treatment of prisoners.
Very few people on earth could resist torture for long. Any former prisoner of war could testify to that. Intense pain, disfigurement, sensory deprivation…all those things could break a person. The real trick to surviving was to give your captors just enough of what they wanted to satisfy them. Even if it meant lying—so long as you didn’t get caught. For now, I’d play along until I found some other way to get myself and Aniya out.
“Fine, I’ll find this vampire for you, but Aniya goes free after this is over,” I said through gritted teeth.
Variola gave me a brief nod, turned, and walked out the door. Her two minions followed her. The lock screeched into place behind them. I slumped to the floor, my body too weak to stand any longer.
Chapter Twelve
Derrick drove me back to the cabin in the Pathfinder the next night after further arrangements were made. At some point during my stay they had picked up my vehicle and moved it to their house. I tilted my head to watch the fast moving landscape going by the window. A seemingly endless number of trees rushed past us through the darkness.
Derrick hadn’t spoken much since handing me my weapons and backpack after we’d made it out of the house. Returning my stuff might have been some kind of peace offering, but I didn’t bother to thank him. Nothing much mattered at this point except getting Aniya free. Both my mind and body were numb to everything else.
Variola, in her infinite generosity, said I could have one day to recover but after that I had to begin the search for Nikolas. I planned to do a lot of sleeping and eating during my short break. A warm, comfortable bed had never sounded so good after my long stay in the basement. When the cabin came into view, it appeared like a beacon. I had left the light on in the bedroom, as well as the one on the porch.
As soon as the vehicle stopped, I hopped out and went to unlock the door. Derrick grabbed his stuff from the back. He’d brought a bag of clothes and some blankets with him. I’d warned him there weren’t any extras in the cabin. My attempts to convince him to sleep outside in wolf form hadn’t worked. I figured he better find the couch comfortable because that was all he was going to get. I wasn’t giving up my bed, not after what I’d been through.
