He looked around at their surroundings, a corrugated steel shed of some kind with a couple of padlocks on the inside of the door, leaving him to wonder how someone had locked them in from the inside, yet the perp was nowhere to be found.
Then he tried to remember what the hell happened and understand why he felt like he’d been drugged. One minute he was snuggled next to Vinnie in the warmth of his bedroom, and the next, he was being dumped on the hard floor with little to no memory of getting here.
Was it another demon? Maybe a werewolf this time?
He listened closely to hopefully determine where they were, but heard no sounds of traffic, water, nothing. Leaning forward, her wrapped an arm around Vinnie’s shoulders and lay her limp body on his lap, then pulled his sweater off to give her something to cushion her head so he could get up and look around.
But there wasn’t much to see. It was a box, probably eight by twenty in size.
As his horn glowed, and his eyes adjusted, Oliver paused as he felt the walls.
Wait. Maybe this wasn’t a shed. Maybe it was a…a shipping container? Looking around again, that felt more accurate.
But what difference did it make what they were being held captive in?
They were being held captive.
His heart sped up despite how sluggish he felt. Had someone captured him, and now had plans to ship him off to some exotic place—like black market stuff?
The women and Vinnie had talked a lot about the kind of money his horn could bring to someone greedy enough. What if whoever did this planned to sell him? But to what end? Would they keep him in a cage and use him at will? And what did they plan to do to Vinnie?
Jesus Christ. He had to wake Vinnie. She needed to be ready for whatever they were facing, but by hell, he wasn’t going down without a damn fight.
Kneeling beside her, Oliver gave her a gentle nudge. “Vinnie! Vinnie, you have to wake up.” He was reluctant to pat her face, it was so swollen, so instead, he pinched the flesh of her arm, instantly regretting it when she twisted away from him.
“Ow! What the heck?”
As her eyes opened and focused on him, he brushed her hair from her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to wake you, but you have to get up, Vinnie.”
She groaned and fought to sit up, using his thigh as leverage. Upon looking around, she asked, “Where are we?”
“In a shipping container, I think. Do you know how the hell we got here?”
Vinnie blinked as though she was remembering something, and then she yelped, “Byron!”
“Who?” he asked, gripping her shoulders.
“Byron, Dorinda’s son,” she said again, as though she still couldn’t believe it.
Oliver frowned. “The one who had fairies at his birthday party? That Byron?”
She bounced her head, her eyes hard chips of ice. “That’s the one. Just as he was hauling you out of your bedroom, and I was clinging to him for all I was worth to try to stop him, I managed to get his ski mask off. I’m as surprised as anyone. Byron’s not exactly Mr. Motivated or even terribly smart. He’s just always gotten by on his parent’s money. This makes no sense.”
“Is this the same guy who was in the driveway with the Corvette and the blonde?”
“That’s him,” she spat.
Damn, damn, damn. “Aw, hell, Vinnie,” he grated out.
She froze on the spot, her eyes wide. “What?”
Dread filled the pit of his stomach. For all the warnings, for all the care these women had taken in keeping him hidden, he was the one who’d fucked up all that effort.
“He saw me. He must have. He roared up beside Marty’s car so quickly, he caught me off guard. I tried to duck, but I ended up whacking my horn and it damn well hurt. My head reared backward, but honestly, I thought he was too drunk to notice because he kept right on walking. But he must have seen me. I forgot all about that. Shit. Shit. Shit!”
Vinnie rasped a long sigh. “Still, I’m telling you, Oliver, he’s the last person I would have suspected would kidnap you. He’s always only done what he had to in order to skate by. He had his friends do his homework, when there was a test, there was always someone to copy from and his parents never took him to task. Even when he got caught. So, I don’t know why he’d want you or your horn. He has plenty of money. Other than being an asshole all the time, I don’t get his motive. Also, he has a gun. A gun.”
Oliver gulped. A gun. “Okay, let’s not think about his motivation now. Let’s think about how the hell we’re going to get out of here. Do you have your phone? Mine’s not getting a signal.”
She nodded, pulling the phone from the back pocket of her jeans, but she didn’t have any bars, either. “Damn!”
He squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. Listen, save the battery and turn it off for now. I have mine. If we need yours for the flashlight, we’ll turn it back on, but my horn seems to be doing the trick. Now, any idea how we got in here, and how we got locked in here with a padlock on the inside of the door?”
She made a face—an angry face. “Byron is capable of magic, Oliver. That’s how he got us here in the first place. He snapped his fingers and wham! I don’t know how strong his magic is. I don’t know what he knows in terms of spells and such, but he’s capable.”
Shit. More magic. Exactly what he didn’t want to hear. “Okay, next. Do you have anything on you to fight back with? Because I’ve got nothing but the clothes on my back. You said he had a gun, right?”
Damn, that scared the shit out of him. They might have immortality on their side, but that didn’t mean they were infallible. They weren’t like Nina, who could take a bullet.
Vinnie began to dig in the pockets of her jeans and came up with a safety pin. It was a big one, but it certainly wasn’t going to do much damage against a gun. “This is it. But maybe we can stab him with it and catch him off guard?”
His mind raced, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be done with a safety pin. “Not a great plan, Vinnie. He has a gun…”
She rubbed her forehead and winced. Clearly her injuries were aching, judging by her pained expression. “Okay, you’re right. He has a gun. Listen, he doesn’t want me. I just happened to come along for the ride, right? Because I latched onto him and the transport spell took me with you both by proxy. He wants you, but he wouldn’t hurt you because it could hurt the alicorn, and he can’t take that chance.”
“But he would hurt you, Vinnie. So whatever you’re hatching in your head, no. End of.”
“Way to DIY this, pal. Listen, I know exactly how to get to him. He’s got a weak spot when it comes to his parents and their money. Nina stuck her finger in that wound when she met him, and if I rub salt in it just enough to distract him—”
“No, Vinnie!” Oliver growled, his stomach turning at the thought. “Do you hear me? No poking the bear. He’s got a gun. I can’t impress upon you enough, he has a gun. He also knows, in terms of magic or whatever he has, we’re weaker. Maybe he’d just shoot me to disable me, but he’d kill you. Kill you.”
She gripped his hand, her fingers freezing cold. “You’re right. But listen, I saw lights go on in the house when I yelled your name to try to wake you up. The dogs were barking their head’s off. Let’s just pray Nina can smell him and she’ll find us. It’s all we have.”
The shipping container shifted then. Not enough to be terribly noticeable unless you were already on edge, but the air became thick and smelled like Sulphur.
And out of nowhere, Byron appeared, his hair slicked back, his eyes cunning, his clothes impeccable…a shiny gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
From the light of Oliver’s horn, she could see Byron was pointing the gun at her head and smiling the smile she remembered so well. Even aged, it was still the same. Beautiful but sneaky. So sneaky.
“That won’t happen. She’s super fucking hot, but not so smart. She gave her hand away when she said she could smell my rotten soul. I’d forgotten vampires could track you by
scent. It’s been a loooong time since I hung out with one—especially one that looks like her. Jesus, she’s hot…but she’ll never track you by your scent, Nerd.”
“So you masked our scents with a spell?” Vinnie asked, pushing her way up from the floor with Oliver’s help. He tried to push her behind him to shield her, but even as she trembled, her rage grew and she rooted herself to the spot.
Byron shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “Yeah. But what would you know about that, Vinnie? You’re a half-breed, aren’t you? No magic spells to speak of. In fact, nothing of any consequence to speak of, not if you inherited your mother’s abilities, anyway.”
God, she was so tired of being labeled and called names for something she didn’t even care about. She was tired of being the paranormal world’s joke because her mother shoved them both down everyone’s throats. She’d hidden away from these people for a very long time to avoid them and now, here she was, all up in the paranormal world’s face.
But enough was enough.
Without warning, Vinnie lifted her chin, a rage from nowhere slithered up her spine, and she took a deep, long breath.
Before she exploded.
Which was a very un-Vinnie thing to do.
She lifted both her hands and flipped Byron the middle finger, her face hot with rage. For all the days he’d made fun of her because they were poor and she didn’t have a father, for all the times he made her feel like a joke, she wanted to say the one thing she’d wanted to say since she’d met him in kindergarten.
“Fuck you, rich-boy elitist weasel! Fuck you and your fucking entitlement, you sorry-ass excuse for a man! Why are you doing this, Byron? Is it because your sissy ass wants a unicorn horn to call his very own? Don’t you have enough toys to play with? Don’t Mommy and Daddy buy you everything your little boy heart desires?”
To anyone else, it might not have appeared to ruffle his feathers much, but she knew Byron. She knew what he was like back on the playground when someone bested him. He was pretty good at hiding it, except for that tic in his jaw. It was small, and it didn’t last long, but she’d gotten under his skin.
What she was going to do now that she’d managed to work her way under his skin was another story. There was no backup plan, but she knew one thing for sure—he wouldn’t kill Oliver because he didn’t know what it would do to the unicorn alicorn.
So this was her one chance to get him to come at her, and she was going to take it by humiliating him—even with Oliver gripping her shoulders from behind as a clear signal to stop poking the bear.
But Byron surprised her by leaning back against the door of the container, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Will it really matter what an elitist I am when I hack this motherfucker’s horn off and sell it to the highest bidder, Vinnie? You stupid, stupid bitch. Always with the high and mighty. Did you think I’d forgotten what a bitch you were? Not a chance. I saw the way you and your hot friends looked at me at my mother’s house like I was some pathetic sack of shit. Fuck you!”
But Vinnie shrugged out of Oliver’s grip and raced right up to Byron, jamming her face in his, so close she could smell his breath.
“They wouldn’t look at you that way if you weren’t a pathetic sack of shit, would they, Rich Boy?” she screamed, her spit flying from her mouth, her head on the verge of exploding with her rage. “What are you going to do with an alicorn anyway, you useless gob of shit? You’re just barely potty-trained.”
He grinned down at her, salacious, wide. “I might be a pathetic sack of shit, but somehow I still managed to get my hands on him, didn’t I? And after others failed, too. I just had to bide my time and wait for the right opportunity. Everyone’s talking about him in our circles—you know, the pure paranormal circles. But don’t worry, Vinnie. I don’t think I’ll have to use my big brain to figure out what to do with an alicorn that has the kind of power his does.”
Her eyes must have flown open, because he leered at her. “I know, I know. I’m a useless gob of shit, but not so useless I didn’t sit up and take notice when your boy here was in my driveway. Not so useless that I didn’t make contact with people who’d want a unicorn horn. Not so useless I wouldn’t spy on you and your fucking hot friend. That Oliver can heal people just upped my asking price. Don’t bother to deny it. Saw it with my own eyes tonight when he healed that half-breed kid. You think someone won’t pay top dollar for your boy here?”
Vinnie gulped and licked her dry lips, but she refused to let him see how terrified she was. And she didn’t know what it was—but something shifted in her.
She didn’t know if it was because she’d had dirt kicked in her face one too many times by him, or maybe it was watching Nina deal with scum like this, but she cared about nothing other than calling him out for what he was. A lazy, entitled, weak little boy.
Her heart screeched in her chest. Her face hurt from the last encounter she’d had with a wall in Hell, but she reared up at him and screamed, “Fuck you, Mama’s Boy!”
Byron’s arm swerved then, and he positioned the gun directly in front of her face, right between her eyes, his lips a thin line. “Talk shit some more, why don’t you, Nerd? See if that doesn’t get you dead, bitch.”
Oliver grabbed for her and shoved her behind him, his chest heaving. Yet, his words were surprisingly steady as a rock. “Enough. Leave her alone. Take me. Take me wherever you want to go, but leave her out of this. You don’t have to kill her if you have me.”
Byron rubbed his fingers together, making the padlocks snap open. “Like you have a fucking choice what I do to her? Shut the fuck up and move,” he ordered sharply. “Or I swear to Christ, I’ll blow her fucking Einstein head off. Hear me, Ollie the Unicorn?”
Using the gun, he motioned for them to get in front of him. “Push the door open and walk, motherfuckers. Time’s up. Now walk!” he yelled.
Grabbing her hand, Oliver pushed the door open with a creak and they stepped out into what was most definitely a shipping yard. Row after row of shipping containers were stacked three of four high. But if he wasn’t shipping Oliver off somewhere, where was he taking them?
It was cold and dark, and as they began to move, her legs stiff and sore, the rain started to pelt them. Icy droplets of cold, hard rain.
Oliver’s horn shone brightly, the pink and purple sparkles ironically cheerful despite their predicament, lighting up the path to what she was sure was going to be their death. How else could this end?
“Walk faster! Walk or I start shooting, little bitches!” he hollered with glee. “I’ll take out her legs first, Oliver. You wanna watch your bitch bleed out?”
Oliver pulled her to his side as Vinnie scanned her memory for some movie or a TV show she’d watched where a gun was being held at the hero’s back, yet, somehow, he managed to escape. But she couldn’t think for the throb of her face and the burning ache of her muscles.
What she could do?
Talk. She could talk. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, but maybe she’d get lucky and hit on something, anything that would help.
“Where are you taking us, Byron?” she yelled as they ate up more and more of the gravel-filled pathways of the shipping yard, taking them to who knew where.
“Shut up, Brainiac. Shut up, or I’m going to take your fucking red head right off while your boyfriend watches.”
She didn’t even know where they were. She didn’t know Buffalo had a shipping yard. Did Buffalo have a shipping yard? Did it make a damn bit of difference if it did?
And then she saw it, up ahead—a car with its headlights on. She prayed it was someone who’d come to help, but she feared the reality was, it was whoever Byron had found to buy Oliver and his alicorn.
And that was when she made a decision. Her mother had dragged Oliver into her crazy matchmaking game, and she was going to get them out. Oliver wouldn’t like it, but it would give him the chance he needed to escape, because there was no other way out.
As they walked, she tried to keep
her focus enough that when she saw the next big rock, she’d trip and fall, and while Byron was busy screaming about how he was going to kill her, Oliver could make a break for it. But she’d have to do it before they got any closer to that damn car.
Her lips were almost frozen together, but somehow she made them move. She turned around and started walking backward, slapping a smile on her face even though it hurt.
“Hey, Byron! Do you remember that time on the playground when Christopher Hennicutt fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm? I was just thinking about that the other day when I was at my job. You know, the one where you earn money all by yourself? Jesus, his arm was all bent up and crooked. Remember?” She turned back around and skipped as well as she could along the path, the car’s headlights getting brighter by the second.
“Shut up!” he howled into the whistling wind.
“Vinnie,” Oliver hissed. “Stop.”
And right there, in all its glory, her opportunity arose in the way of a pothole just up ahead. She calculated approximately where she’d have to walk to hit it just right, and then she turned back around and called out to him, “Do you remember what you said when you saw him? You said—”
She hit the pothole like a ton of bricks, and as a by the by, it was a helluva lot deeper than she’d first thought, so when she went down, her ankle twisted so sharply, it was probably better off she was going to end up dead.
Because in the infamous words of her most favorite vampire, that shit was gonna hurt.
As she crashed into the pothole, she screamed out, “Run, Oliver, run!”
And that was when the first shot was fired.
Oliver’s eyes flew to where Vinnie fell, his heart crashing so hard in his chest he thought it would explode.
Byron aimed the gun at her, but the headlights of the car must have impaired his vision, or he was a really shitty shot, because he fired the gun and the bullet pinged one of the shipping crates with a sharp report.
That was the moment Oliver took his opportunity—the only one he’d probably have. As Byron ran toward Vinnie, gun pointed at her while she lie helpless on the ground, her ankle twisted behind her, Oliver ran.
ACCIDENTAL UNICORN, THE Page 20
