by Gayla Twist
“For a minute, there, I thought I was dead, too,” Scott croaked.
Vance interrupted the quiet tête-à-tête by commanding, “Kelly, stick to procedure. Dave, check Scott for bites.”
Dave was already stepping forward with Rick right behind him. “It's okay. I'm not bit,” Scott said, struggling to get to his feet.
“You know the rules,” Dave closed in. “Let's go.”
Dave and Rick started roughly stripping Scott of his leathers. “Easy guys. I'm not bit.” Scott squawked in protest.
With the beating of his heart finally slowing in his chest, Nick became more aware of his surroundings. His eyes adjusted and he was able to look around the dimly lit front hall. It was cavernous with tall, narrow peaked windows that faced the front of the building, but were now heavily shuttered with reinforced wood. The remnants of a few torn curtains hung askew on broken curtain rods. An oil painting of a man on a Napoleon style rearing horse hung over the blocked fireplace, it’s canvas only slightly torn. There were rows upon rows of framed photographs, almost all of which were missing their glass, showing boys and young men lined up in military fashion, wearing matching gray uniforms. Crowded around him in the hall was a large group of lean and disheveled looking boys, most of whom were watching Scott get worked over. “What in the hell is all this?” the pilot murmured.
“I'm not bit,” Scott insisted, indignant. His protests echoed off the tall ceiling but doing little to dissuade the others from relieving him of all his clothes.
“He’s clean,” Dave announced, letting Scott drop to the ground with a dull thunk.
“Told you,” Scott said, sullenly, as he hiked up the pants of his leather suit.
“What happened to you guys out there?” Vance demanded. “Why were you so far back?”
“We...” Kelly couldn’t think of a plausible excuse. “We screwed up.” He confessed, hanging his head in shame.
Whirling around, Vance confronted Nick. “Saving you almost cost us a man.”
“I'm sorry,” the pilot stammered. “I had no idea. I mean, vampires, right? How was I supposed to know? It just,” Nick floundered for words. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Next time you delay us, we'll leave you,” Vance snarled.
Martin crept up next to Vance and whispered in his ear, causing the older boy’s eyes to shift back in Nick’s direction. “You're right,” he said. Then, to Nick, “I'm afraid we're going to have to check you for bites.”
Nick stiffened. “Forget it, kid. No one's checking me for anything.”
Vance was not dissuaded. “Listen, we have procedures to follow. No one gets inside unless we're sure they're not going to vamp.”
“What? Don't be ridiculous.”
Vance signaled to Dave with a thrust of his chin. “Would you please check our guest?”
Dave, Kelly, and Rick stepped towards Nick. “You have three choices," Dave said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You can strip. We can strip you. Or you can go outside.”
Nick scanned the faces surrounding him. They were deadly serious. “Okay, fine," he capitulated setting his satchel gently on the stone floor. "If it'll make you guys feel better." He quickly shrugged out of his bomber jacket, yanked off his button down and t-shirt, then unbuckled his jeans and dropped them around his ankles, not bothering to remove his laced up boots. “Satisfied?” he asked, unwilling to be embarrassed.
Dave gestured towards his boxer shorts. “Drop 'em.”
Nick thought about protesting, but he knew it would do no good. He had the vague recollection of some of his old buddies talking about pledge week at various fraternity houses. The pilot shed his boxer shorts down to his ankles.
Vance barely looked in Nick’s direction. Instead, he half turned to question Dave. “Who's first watch tonight?”
“Owen’s squad.”
“Tell him to be on high alert. Something tells me we're not done for the night.”
Dave jerked his head towards Nick, who had figured he’d been on display long enough and was hastily yanking up his boxers. “What do we do with him?”
Vance shrugged “Let him get dressed.”
Copyright © 2013 Adrianne Ambrose
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and everything else are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Visit the author at:
http://gaylatwist.blogspot.com
@gaylatwist
And on Facebook under Gayla Twist ;)
