by K M Smith
“What the hell is going on!?” Shouting into the empty forest, he turned on the spot, searching for what—or who—could’ve put that wall up between himself and Alice. Nothing tripped his supernatural sensors, but that was a supernatural wall, and Alice didn’t put it up. He was certain of it.
Relying on his internal radar, Adam darted effortlessly through the woods and found himself on an isolated dirt road outside of town. He stopped moving, closed his eyes and let his senses expand over the area. Using psychic feelers, he searched the surroundings for any signature traces of known supernatural visitors. He found none, but a buzzing and crackling sensation clung to the air. Only a distracted vampire in unfamiliar territory would leave such a recognizable calling card behind. The invisible calling card yielded no helpful information as Adam walked through it. No names came to mind, no clues to their origins. It could be some other supernatural creature, but there hadn’t been werewolves this far south in decades. No, these were vampires – plural – and they were not welcome.
Staring at the dirt road, a pile of small stones caught his eye. Following the crest of the stone pile, he discovered tread marks. Vampires in a car? His mind ran through scenarios that might necessitate vampires utilizing a car, along a dirt road, near the woods, in a small town that already had a resident vampire. He could only think of one thing: kidnapping.
Who would kidnap Alice? And why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Leo
“Stop it, Leo!” a voice shouted from over his shoulder. He ignored the voice, fully engrossed in drinking Alice dry. In the distance he could hear footsteps scuffing on the sidewalk, rushing in his direction. Leo mentally rolled his eyes and took in one last, deep draw from his victim before reluctantly letting go. Releasing Alice’s neck, he hissed as the other vampire approached.
“Damnit! You weren’t supposed to hurt her!” Jake shouted, and clipped him on the shoulder.
Leo grimaced at the dressing down by his partner. “She’ll be fine, pretty boy,” he muttered. Knowing it would drive his partner crazy, he purposefully let Alice’s limp body slide toward the ground. Jake followed rules, covered his tracks, did as he was told. Leo did what he wanted to do, and if he got the job done in the process, great.
“You’ve nearly killed her!” Jake bent down and wrapped Alice’s arm over his shoulder as he scooped her up. He scowled at Leo as he pushed past him. “C’mon, we’ve got to get back. Drew’s gonna be pissed.”
Leo wiped his bloody face with the back of his hand. “She sassed me!” he said. “I told her not to, Jake.” Leo followed Jake down the sidewalk.
“Nobody says ‘sass’ anymore, Leo.” Jake kept walking until he came to an unlit part of the sidewalk. “We need to get her to the car before she wakes up.” He turned to face Leo. “She better wake up, Leo.”
Leo looked down and sucked at his teeth. He lifted his head and was about to say something when Jake threw Alice over his shoulder and vanished into the woods, heading toward the getaway car. Grumbling about being interrupted by his rude partner, Leo shrugged and followed them at a more human pace.
“Sure is cold out here, tonight,” Leo said and rubbed his shoulders. Snickering, he looked away when the icicles coming out of Jake’s eyes got too intense. Alice hung limply over Jake’s shoulder. “Taking good care of our girl, I see.” Leo nodded at her fingertips which were brushing Jake’s beltline.
Through clenched teeth, Jake said, “Open the door and I’ll slide her into the back seat.”
“I think you should put her in the trunk—she can’t escape there.”
“This isn’t a mob hit, Leo.” Jake rolled his eyes. “Just open the door.”
Leo shook his head. “All right. But don’t blame me if she gets away. You’ll have to tell Drew.” He pulled the door open and stepped back to allow Jake to lay Alice down across the back seat. Once she was in, Jake stood up and closed the door.
“Keys,” Jake said, holding out his hand.
Without a word, Leo handed the keys to his cohort and got in the passenger seat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Alice
With a moan, Alice stirred in the back seat. She pushed herself up, her hands sinking into the soft leather. Looking out through heavy eyelids, the rounded silhouettes of the tops of two heads just above the headrests came into view. Blinking to clear away her head-fog, her surroundings came into focus. “What? What is go—”
The vampire who’d attacked her was in the passenger’s seat, and he turned around after she began to move. He drew his lips back and forced his fangs to drop, hissing and snarling as he did so.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “Wonderful, just what I was hoping to see: B-movie Vampman.” She pressed her head into the seatback and closed her eyes.
The passenger snarled, dejected, drew his fangs back in, and turned around.
Alice then realized someone else was driving: another man, presumably also a vampire. He turned his head and snickered at the passenger. Alice caught a brief glimpse of his face in profile as he turned. His smile was tight, but there was a playful fire dancing behind his pale blue eyes.
“Aw, Leo,” the driver tutted. Alice sat upright at the sound of his voice and the mention of a name. “Did she break your heart?” The blue-eyed driver was laughing out loud now, and Alice looked up to watch the interaction unfold in the rear-view mirror. She caught her breath as she realized she couldn’t see either of them.
“Holy—!” She clapped her hand over her mouth, hoping they hadn’t heard her.
“Shut it, Jakey,” the vampire called Leo snapped. “She’ll get hers, and so will you if you’re not careful!” He crossed his arms, and turned his head to look out the window.
From the backseat, Alice took in her surroundings. Not wanting to get caught staring, though unsure what these men could see or hear, she kept her eyes from looking directly at the rearview mirror. If her experiences with Adam were anything to go by, she did not want to chance either of these two getting inside her head and causing crazy memory crashes. She shuttered to think.
The driver’s shoulders were bobbing. Clearly, he had no respect for the passenger. The passenger kept grumbling at the window with his arms crossed over his chest. The ride was comfortable, but the car wasn’t brand new. Hers was a sort of bench seat made of smooth leather that bucketed only slightly for the window seats. The leather was cool and firm against her back. The seats up front looked sporty and had angular headrests. The stereo had a large face that put out a low blue light but there was no obvious navigation system or charging ports for cell phones. The driver turned to look at the passenger again, smirking as he did. Alice smirked reflexively but quickly turned her head away when the driver tilted his head toward the mirror, pretending to inspect the cargo net on the seatback in front of her.
Streetlights intermittently illuminated the interior as they cruised down the highway. Seconds ticked by, then minutes, in silence. Finally, Alice spoke. “Where are you taking me?”
“Don’t tell ’er, Jake,” Leo started in. “She’s trying to mess with our heads! Don’t tell ’er nothin’!”
Jake kept his hands on the steering wheel, but looked over at Leo, “Really?”
“I know what I felt,” Leo said, turning his head to face Jake. He dropped his voice, “and I know what I heard.” He pressed his lips together and flared his nostrils.
“I can still hear you,” Alice mock-whispered from the back seat.
Leo turned around in his seat, “I’m warning you, little girl!”
“Ease up, Leo. She’s had a rough night,” Jake began. Clearly, he was the good cop. “First, she has a fight with her boyfriend—”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Alice cut in. Her cheeks flushed, revealing a nugget of truth Alice didn’t want to think about.
Jake nodded then, and she could have sworn he had his eyes on her in the mirror. At that thought, an unwelcome flutter of butterflies filled her stomach.
“What?
” she said defensively.
“Nothing,” Jake replied. “As I was saying, she had a fight with her friend,” he dragged out the word, “then she got hit on by a loser vampire like you, Leo.” Leo flinched at the mention of his name. “And now she’s here in a car with two strangers, and she realizes she’s feeling a bit dizzy from losing huge quantities of her own blood.” Jake paused. “And, she just wants to know where she’s going. Seems a reasonable request to me, Leo.” Jake looked over at his partner.
Leo grunted. “You tell ’er what you wanna tell ’er. But when Drew finds out you lost her because you’ve got a crush on her, don’t come runnin’ to me!”
“Who’s Drew?” Alice piped in, leaning forward and putting her arms up on the seats in front of her. Her newfound spunk surprised her, but she needed information. She would do what she needed to do to get it and get away.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jake said. He gave Leo a stern look.
Leo glared back at Jake.
Alice assumed she’d missed something between the two. She could only imagine what that was.
Jake shook his head and kept driving. Slouching back in her seat, Alice looked out the passenger side window at the moon, imagining it was following them, like she used to do as a child.
“Well,” Jake said, “you’re in luck, Alice. It’s going to be light soon; we’re going to have to stop somewhere for the day.”
“Why is that lucky? And how do you know my name?” Alice asked, looking in Jake’s direction.
“You’re in a car with two vampires hurtling down the highway to God knows where, and you’ve decided now is the time to start asking questions?”
“Don’t deflect,” Alice retorted. “I was as good as drugged after Leo attacked me—I’m still a little groggy—and I want to know how you know my name.”
“Drew told us,” Leo answered. He looked at Jake and harrumphed, his arms folded in front of his chest.
“You’re sealing your fate, old man,” Jake said, turning his head.
“I’m shaking.”
“Um, children?” Alice leaned forward to get their attention. “If you’re done fighting, you may want to check out the impending sunrise.” She pointed toward the faint blue line forming on the horizon.
“Dammit, Leo, you distracted me!” Jake said.
“Don’t blame this on me, you’re the one drivin’!” Leo huffed, shaking his head.
Alice fell back in the seat. She put the back of her hand to her forehead and propped herself up with the other hand. Hot and clammy, she suddenly had the urge to vomit.
“Stop the car!” She moved her hand from her forehead to her mouth.
Jake whipped his head around. “Shit!” Alice kept her hand over her mouth and forced her eyes to go wide, silently pleading with Jake to pull over. He obliged, and the car’s tires crunched to a stop over the rocky gravel on the side of the road. Alice watched in amazement as one moment Jake was in the driver’s seat and the next he was opening her door. Her mind struggled to process it all, but she could only focus on not vomiting.
“There you go,” Jake said as he helped her out of the car.
Hand firmly over her mouth, she darted toward the trees, then stopped as she leaned forward and retched. Every time she heaved, she stumbled in the gravel, barely able to keep herself upright. Jake moved to her side to steady her, and hold her hair back. When she had finished, Alice wiped her mouth with the back of her hand then tried to stand upright. She trembled as she let go of her knees, and they buckled.
Jake held onto her, keeping her from falling and landing in her own puke.
“Thank you,” Alice murmured when she felt steady on her feet. “You don’t happen to have any gum or mints, do you?” she asked, covering her mouth with her fingers and scrunching up her nose in disgust.
“Ah, no. Sorry.” Jake said, shaking his head. “Let’s get you back in the car so we can find a safe place to sleep for the day.”
“Safe for whom?” Alice muttered as she slid into the car, not expecting an answer.
Jake sped back around to the driver’s seat. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he began, then scowled at Leo, “anymore. Actually, we’ve been instructed to bring you back unharmed.” He stressed the last word and glared at Leo again.
Leo turned his head toward the window again, and Alice assumed she’d missed something else.
The night closed in on her. She couldn’t follow their conversation any longer. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she flopped back on the headrest, mouth agape. Too much had happened, and she had lost too much blood. Her body was done for the night.
“Fantastic,” Jake said, his sharp voice cutting through the dark car and barely catching Alice’s consciousness. “She better not be dead, Leo!”
“You know she ain’t dead. Just drive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Adam
Adam rushed to Sarah’s house. The sun would be up in two hours and he couldn’t wait a whole day to warn her about Alice’s abduction. That Sarah had no reason to believe him or invite him in made no difference to him. She had to know. He had to tell her.
Standing on the snowy sidewalk outside Sarah’s house contemplating how to begin a conversation with her, he let his mind pace as he remained still. He felt bound to Sarah; he was bound to Sarah, or rather, she was bound to him. When she ingested his blood it had left an indelible mark, an unbreakable bond between the two. She would never know it, but whenever she felt nervous, or frightened, or helpless, or even elated, Adam knew it. He felt it, too. Right now, he felt Sarah’s worry, but he didn’t know if she knew what he knew, or if she was worried about something else entirely. It didn’t matter; he needed to talk to her, to get through to her without frightening her.
Finally, he moved up the steps to ring the doorbell. Even though he had been inside this house once many years ago, he had been invited in by Drew. And since Drew was “missing presumed dead” and no longer listed as an owner of the house, Adam’s earlier invitation would no longer be valid. He pressed his index finger to the old-fashioned circular doorbell next to the large solid wood door. The bell chimed behind the walls and he waited, hoping Sarah would answer the door. Just before he reached out to ring again, he heard the creaks from the floorboards upstairs. The movement was slow, but eventually Sarah made her way down the stairs.
He could see her clearly through the glass pane beside the door as she descended the last stair. Her soft hair was rumpled and drawn back loosely from her face. Tension evident in her fingers as she held the fluffy lapels of her bathrobe tight to her chest, her hands drawn close to her heart in a protective manner. Steps from the door, she spotted him. Stopping short, she peeked out the window. One stiff hand gripped her robe, the other went to her mouth. She gasped and her fear radiated out, hitting him like a blow to the chest.
Dazed by her natural beauty and stunned by her fear, Adam froze before registering that she was scared of him. He snapped to attention and sent out rolling waves of calm. The air enveloped her like a warm protective blanket. It slid around her middle and over her shoulders relaxing her. He hoped.
Adam took a small step back, signaling that he was no threat. He softened his entire demeanor, tucking his hands into his pockets, by all appearances, a happy and expected visitor. He continued sending waves of calm, hoping it would make her comfortable enough to open the door. He could talk his way in after that.
Sarah yawned and rubbed her eyes; clearly, his calming waves had worked. She reached for the chain to open the door to him. Adam stayed back as she filled the gap between the door and its frame, theoretically preventing the stranger on her doorstep from entering. It was an instinctive but ineffective move. He made a mental note to talk to Sarah about opening the door to strangers.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice groggy with sleep, one hand placed on the doorknob, ready to close the door if need be.
“Sarah, I—” Adam looked her in the eyes. His smile was
warm and charming, his thoughts focused on making her feel comfortable. “I have some things I’d like to talk to you about. Won’t you invite me inside?”
Sarah stepped back willingly. Her face brightened at his suggestion of being invited inside and she calmly opened the door.
“Please,” she said, a warm smile spreading across her face. “Won’t you come in? It’s cold out there tonight!” Throwing the door wide, she stepped back to allow him in.
Adam’s body buzzed with anticipation. After so many years of self-ascribed banishment, this was a moment he had longed for, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Thank you,” as he stepped over the threshold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sarah
Sarah led him through the living room and into the kitchen, now fully awake and in hostess mode. Something about having that man sitting at her kitchen table made her feel content. She shuffled around the kitchen, no longer gripping her bathrobe. The ceramic mugs clinked together as she brought them down out of the cupboard. The silverware drawer creaked as she opened it, the metallic tinkling of the spoons a familiar part of the tea ritual. The kettle hissed and whistled on the stovetop. Sarah grabbed her favorite blue quilted potholder and wrapped it around the handle of the kettle while she poured boiling water over tea bags in her white china teapot. She set the kettle back on the stove, stirred the contents of the teapot, and replaced the lid with a clink. She grabbed the heavily stained pink striped tea cozy that Alice had crocheted for her back in middle school and placed it snugly over the teapot to keep their brew warm while they talked.
She grabbed the milk from the refrigerator and poured some into the china creamer that matched the teapot. “Do you take sugar?” she asked the stranger.
