Wombstone (The Vampireland Series)

by Jessica Roscoe

  He must have felt me stiffen, and he immediately guessed what I was staring at.

  “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “It’s just to make you feel better.”

  “Better?” I said incredulously. “Aren’t you just going to kill me?”

  We shared an uncomfortable silence as he tried to answer my question.

  “Look,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re here or what’s going to happen.”

  “He’s going to kill me,” I said flatly.

  “Nobody is going to kill you,” he said firmly. “Honestly, I don’t lie. There’s no point me giving you false hope.”

  “He won’t let me go,” I insisted.

  He looked at the floor. “No, probably not.”

  “I wish he would just kill me already,” I said miserably.

  He laid me gently on his bed, carefully avoiding my neck, and arranged the blankets around me. I held tightly onto the blanket I’d carried with me, the one that contained my crudely fashioned wooden stake – and my last shot at freedom.

  “I need to put this IV in,” he said apologetically. I looked away, barely even feeling the tiny prick as the needle entered a fresh vein in my arm.

  “Sleep now,” he said, still with that persuasive tone, but gentler. I obeyed, settling back on the pillow, firmly clutching my blanket. Ryan sat in a plush leather chair beside the bed, fussing with the IV blood bag, and then the plastic tubing, until there was nothing left to fuss with.

  I lay there for what seemed like ages, waiting for Ryan to relax beside me. Finally, I couldn't wait any longer. I shifted and felt him tense beside me immediately. Shit. This could take me a while. I thought of all the things a normal sleeping person would do. I sighed, I rolled over, I shifted, I even threw in a couple of snores for effect. My right hand reached into my blanket and curled around a splintered piece of wood I had fashioned into a crude stake by rubbing it along the concrete floor in my cell. It was now or never.

  I cracked open one eye and saw Ryan, engrossed in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. How fitting. I would have made a dig about a vampire reading a Stephen King book, but since I was about to kill him, it would have to wait until he was staked.

  I drew a deep breath, opened both eyes, sat bolt upright in bed and struck out with my stake.

  I don't know who was more surprised – me or him. Him, at the fact that he had just been taken down by a girl, or me, that I had managed to get the stake into his chest without getting punched in the face.

  He gasped, looking down at his chest. “You ... Bitch,” he said angrily, clearly still dazzled by my wicked stabbing skills. I had hurt him, sure, but I didn't think the stake was in far enough or at the right angle to kill him. Which meant time to run. He opened his mouth to yell out, but a pathetic little cough came out instead.

  I threw the covers off and stood clumsily, backing towards the door. It was disgustingly satisfying to watch Ryan writhe in pain as he tried to pull the stake out of his chest. I couldn't believe I had missed his damned heart at such close range.

  I opened the door, giving him one last glance. He kept gasping and thrashing about, but there was no time to knock him out or gag him. Or kill him, which was what he deserved. I had to leave. I hurried through the kitchen and lounge room and stepped out of the apartment. I closed the door quietly, not liking the way I could hear Ryan's muffled choking through the door. Thankfully, the hallway appeared deserted. I moved fast, tiptoeing down the corridor towards what I hoped was a way outside. The hallway stretched for miles in both directions, and each time I reached an intersecting hallway, I took the brighter looking direction. The vampires seemed to avoid sunlight, and I figured the sunnier it was, the less chance I would have of running into one.

  Unfortunately for me though, logic didn’t prevail. Through the maze of corridors, it only took a few moments before a vampire was walking down the hall, coming straight for me.

  Shit! I wavered for a moment. I was now completely lost, and in no hurry to retrace my steps and try escaping in another direction. I could hide somewhere and wait for the guy to go, but Ryan was probably healed by now, and on his way to catch me and drag me back to my cell. I had to keep moving. I continued towards him as casually as possible, and then took the first intersecting corridor that presented itself.

  “Hey!” he yelled straight away, and I froze. Don't stop. Just get away. Vampires moved fast though, and by the time I started moving again, he was right with me. I turned to face him, and smiled nonchalantly. “Hey yourself!” I replied cheerily.

  He eyed me warily, coming closer. “You're the girl from New Jersey, right?”

  I laughed breezily. Thinking, Ryan, do not fucking interrupt us.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. I was supposed to have forgotten where I was from, after all.

  The guy might have been undead, but thankfully he didn't appear to be very smart.

  “Hey, whats that in your pocket?”

  “Huh?” Shit. He had seen the stake. He rushed at me, just in time for me to fish the stake out of my waistband and hold it in front of me and for Ryan to come around the corner, minus his chest stake. I couldn't tell who was more pissed, and I didn't want to hang around to ask. The dumb guy charged me, and I pointed the sharp part of the stake outwards. As he approached I thrust out with it, sidestepping him at the same time. Incredibly, he missed me and the stake altogether and smashed into the stained glass window directly behind me. No, he smashed through the window and kept going. I jumped, wincing as I heard him hit the ground. It sounded like we were pretty high up, judging by the timing of his fall and the ensuing splat.

  Ryan blinked in disbelief, his bloodied shirt flapping in the new breeze created by the open window. I must have done some decent damage, because there was blood all over his shirt, soaking his jeans, and trailing behind him on the floor in neat little splats. I wished the wood splinters in his chest would become infected and cause him a long, traumatic death.

  One could hope.

  Ryan glared at me, and I smiled sweetly in response. Sunlight flooded into the hallway through the broken window, hurting my raw eyes. I hadn't seen much more than a crack of sun through boarded–up windows in weeks. Instinctively I stepped backwards and up, hoisting myself onto the narrow window ledge that led outside, where dumb vamp had eaten concrete.

  My elation turned to despair as Ryan came closer, effectively blocking off the other hallway in both directions. It left me trapped on the ledge with no place to go except back into the arms of my captor.

  I stole a glance outside and was slammed by a wave of vertigo. Shit! I was at least four floors up, not one or two as I had foolishly hoped. And not only was there nothing soft to jump onto, there was also nothing to shimmy down but smooth limestone walls.

  I was stuck.

  “Come on” Ryan beckoned, coming at me with hands outstretched. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”

  I glanced from him to the ground below. He was wrong. I did have somewhere to go. And I had no hope left inside me that I would escape, unless I took this beautiful sunlight and broken window and–

  “Stay where you are or I'll jump!” I yelled, thrusting my stake at the air in warning. Ryan smirked, coming closer.

  “Don't be stupid,” Ryan said, as his hand began to close around my wrist. “You won't jump.”

  I did.

  TWELVE

  There had been no time to think. Trusting my instincts, I had held my arms out and shifted my weight so that one foot left the safety of the stone windowsill and pushed away until it touched air. Ryan had reached out and tried to pull me back, but even with his superhuman abilities, he was no match for gravity.

  The fall itself was over in an instant. Some people say you black out as soon as you hit bottom after falling, but that's not right. We landed together, awkwardly, the concrete and the weight of his body shattering me.

  For a split second the world ceased to exist – there was only darkness
, and my soul floated within that darkness. I thought that I had died from the impact; it had come on so suddenly. But after a few seconds I started to feel. And what I was feeling was beyond any pain I had ever experienced in my short time on earth. My head screamed from the impact, but I could barely make a sound. Somehow, that made it worse – being torn apart inside and not being able to make a noise.

  I became more aware of where I was, of my surroundings, as the crushing weight on my back rolled off. I sucked in a small breath and coughed up wet stuff. I didn't want to know what it was. Finally, I got enough air in my lungs again, and I screamed and screamed.

  The left side of my face, where I had directly impacted the ground, felt like it had cracked open entirely. I could feel my pulse in my temple, and I guessed it was my blood pumping out of my damaged skull; when I tried to lift my head, move my legs to crawl away, nothing happened.

  “You stupid girl,” a groan came from beside me, and I opened my eyes. I could still see, though my left eye was quickly being swallowed up by the pool of blood that grew underneath me. I tried to move again, but I could only manage a pathetic reach with my bloodied arm. Ryan was beside me, bleeding and injured as well, but it looked like he was healing rapidly. He dragged himself to a sitting position and squinted at me in the bright sunlight.

  I dragged a shaky breath and whimpered in agony as Ryan took my shoulders and rolled me onto my back. “Sorry,” he muttered, letting go of my shattered left shoulder.

  Now you're sorry? I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

  Ryan looked around the courtyard. Apparently, we were alone for the moment. The IQ–challenged vamp who had sailed through the window had obviously recovered from his fall quickly enough to avoid being landed on by me.

  “I'm going to die,” I whispered, closing my eyes in defeat. Once I had accepted the fact, a feeling of peace washed over me, and although I still felt the pain, I also felt relief that I could finally get away from this hell on earth. Now I understood why Kate had wanted Caleb to kill her. Anything was better than being a vampire's thirty–day blood supply.

  “Hey, wake up. You're not going to die. I'm going to help you.”

  I jerked on the ground where I lay, and my eyes flew open. “No,” I argued. “No!”

  Ryan shook his head slowly, taking a shard of shattered window and creating a long gash down his arm. “You'll be okay,” he said solemnly, taking my bleeding – broken – left arm and pressing his single wound to one of my many.

  “No!” I tried to push him away with my good arm.

  “I'm trying to help you, Mia.” He grabbed my arm, completely immobilizing me.

  “I don't want your help!”

  “You'll die.”

  I took one more breath and began to weep. “Please don't do it,” I begged him. “Please just let me die.”

  I began to writhe and gasp as vampire blood trickled into my veins. It made my fall feel like a scraped knee. It was intense and unrelenting. I choked on a wail as I felt darkness and pain invade every cell in my being.

  “Make it stop!” I begged deliriously.

  After that, I couldn't speak. I was too busy screaming as vampire blood overwhelmed my nervous system. I screamed and screamed, but there was no end. After what seemed like hours screaming into the waning sunlight of the afternoon, I blacked out.

  THIRTEEN

  Wake up.

  Those were the first words I ever heard.

  I opened my eyes. Naked save for a bloodied white sheet, my tender skin covered in sticky red blood. My broken body somehow – impossibly – repairing itself.

  I tried to turn my head to the side, to see where I was, and groaned in pain. Staying still felt better. I was sticky and bruised. My body was fighting hard to mend all the deep gashes and crushed bones. I lifted an arm and gently felt my eye where I had taken the impact of the unforgiving ground. It was excruciatingly painful to the touch – but it wasn't shattered anymore. It was in one unbroken piece, as if my fall had been a terrible dream. The oddly comforting metallic taste in my mouth told me otherwise, though.

  I reached out with my hands, touching stiff sheets. I was hot, but I was shivering, goosebumps lining my arms.

  It was so hard to keep my eyes open, but I fought to stay awake. I wasn't dead. I still had something left inside of me. I couldn't give up yet.

  A face appeared above me. Something warm and coppery touched my lips.

  “Drink.”

  I did.

  Time passed – how much, I have no idea – and I stayed in the same spot, and I slept off death.

  ***

  Later, I heard the words again.

  Wake up.

  Nighttime. It could have been days, weeks, months – or just a single hour since I'd last been awake. I had no idea. I felt a little clearer, and I found I could move my head without wanting to scream.

  “Get up and take a shower.”

  I did.

  Standing under the hot water (how long had it been since I'd had a long, hot, uninterrupted shower?) was bliss. Bliss that soon ended up with a pile of questions. I started to hyperventilate at the sheer impossibility of what was happening. I was trying not to think about it – but who was I kidding? I knew why I was ‘magically’ all better. And I knew it wasn't Starbucks Gingerbread Lattes that I'd been drinking every time I was woken up by soft words and warm, soothing liquid that slid down my throat like – well, like Gingerbread Lattes at Christmas time. It had been blood. Vampire blood.

  As I watched the dried blood start to flake off and dissolve into the steamy water, a wave of dizziness hit me. I sank down to a sitting position on the side of the narrow tub, the flimsy shower curtain resting against the film of water on my back.

  How could this be possible?

  How could I be alive?

  I tentatively massaged shampoo into my long, dark brown hair, picking out little pieces of glass and clumps of dried blood and thick knots. One of the pieces of glass gouged the tip of my finger and I flinched. A drop of blood appeared, then another, and I rinsed it underneath the water.

  I looked at it again. The cut had completely disappeared.

  I held my hand to my mouth to stop myself from crying out. This could not be happening.

  And I could not believe how, from a snow–filled parking lot five minutes from home, it had ended up like this.

  A knock at the door made me jump.

  “You okay in there?”

  “Yes.” My wavering voice sounded like a stranger's. How long had it been since I'd spoken?

  I shut the water off, swallowing a painful lump in my throat. I may have been ‘rescued’, but I still felt like I was a prisoner – I'd just switched one cage for another. And now I was alone with him.

  Thunder rolled overhead, and I heard rain. The whole room shook in the wind. Blinking wearily, I reached for one of the folded beige towels on the sink and wrapped it around my dripping hair. I wrapped the other towel around my torso, took one last look in the filthy, foggy mirror, straightened my shoulders, and ventured out of the bathroom.

  He had taken the bloodstained sheets off the bed while I was showering. They were balled up in the corner of a room that was tiny. A double bed on one side, a small sofa and an ancient–looking TV set bolted to the wall on the other. In between, a door that led to the outside world.

  “I got you some clothes to wear.” He gestured to the neatly folded pile on the end of the unmade bed. I took them back into the bathroom and quickly slipped them on – a black fitted camisole, dark denim jeans and a pair of bright red Havaianas that were two sizes too big for my feet. No bra or underwear, but the camisole was thick and supportive enough to leave something to the imagination. I refolded the damp towels and closed the bathroom door behind me.

  “Someone is on the way to get us.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you – thirsty?”

  I walked gingerly to the sink, filled a tumbler with water, and gulped it down. Then refilled it.<
br />
  “No,” I said.

  “Hungry?”

  “Nope.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed, then got up and looked out of the window. We were on the ground floor of what looked like a horseshoe–shaped arrangement of motel rooms. The plastic sign out front read La Guena Mexica.

  Where the hell are we?

  “Mexico.”

  I dropped the glass, startled. It bounced on the thin carpet but didn’t smash, water sloshing onto my feet and the ground.

  “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.”

  “How did you –”

  He started towards me, but stopped in the middle of the room. I can't say I had the most receptive expression on my face.

  “We're linked,” he explained softly, pointing to his head, then mine.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I scowled at him.

  “Think of something,” he offered.

  I threw out some random thoughts. Cheese. The Eiffel tower. My cat, Polly.

  “I prefer mozzarella. I've been there twice. I’m more of a dog person.”

  I sat back, stunned.

  “I don't want you to do that anymore,” I said. “If you want to help me, don't ever do that again.”

  “Okay” he said. “I'll try. But it's kind of like a two–way radio. Sometimes I can't help but pick up the signal.”