Knowing it would do nothing, I reflexively pulled at my wrist. The bar didn't budge. Panic welled in me; now I was chained to the wall in this room that terrified me. Genuinely afraid, I grabbed Teren's hand. As he started to come back around, he loosely held mine back. He laid his head against the rough wall of the square coffin we were in, and tried to smile encouragingly at me, but his face was too full of fear and pain to successfully pull it off. At least Teren and I were in this together.
The man's chuckling returned my attention to him. He was smiling at the sight of Teren and me huddled on the dirt floor before him, holding hands.
I tried to appeal to whatever humanity this man probably didn't have. "Please, let us go. He's really hurt. He needs to be in a hospital."
The man laughed once and spat on the ground. "He'll be fine, once he changes. At least, until I stake him, of course."
I squinted as I tried to absorb what he was saying. "What?"
The man squatted down to look me in the eye. He reached out to touch my hair and I instinctively pulled away from him. "I don't relish killing humans, but you can't be allowed to live, vamp lover." He pointed with his thumb at Teren. "I'm going to let him finish you, and then I'll finish him." He brushed his hands off on each other. "All clean." He smirked at me. "You can think of it as me getting justice on your murderer, if you like?"
My body went ice cold with the confirmation that he was planning on killing us...and nefariously too. "Teren would never hurt me. Your plan will fail. He would never kill a human!" I felt Teren squeeze my hand a little tighter and I grasped his like a lifeline.
Weakly Teren muttered, "She's right. I'd never-"
The man brushed Teren's legs with his hands, making Teren stop talking and cry out in pain.
"Stop it!" I yelled at him.
He ignored my outburst and responded to my statement. "Won't kill, huh?" His dark eyes bored into mine. "Not even after he changes? Not even when he's...deathly hungry?"
Teren sucked in a sharp breath and I felt the blood draining from my face. That was the one time we were both a little unsure of. I frantically pulled at the cuffs again as I looked over at Teren. That was when I realized he wasn't restrained. Damn if my sister hadn't been right-on with her fear. Here I was, chained to the wall next to a vampire, just like some damn virgin sacrifice.
I sputtered in protest. "Weeks? You're going to keep us down here for weeks, waiting for him to..." My thoughts trailed off as my eyes ran over Teren's legs, soaked in blood. The man's jacket was streaked with it from where he'd held him up. "He won't make it for weeks." My eyes went back to the man's. "You've killed him already. He won't survive until the change!"
The man straightened and laughed at me. Shaking his head, he reached into his back pocket and grabbed a case. While I snuck a peek at Teren, who was scrutinizing every move the man made, our captor spoke in an amused voice. "I don't have time to wait weeks. This one has nest-mates, who will eventually look for him." He opened the silver case and pulled out a syringe. Tapping the glass, he pushed some pink fluid out of the tip, removing the air bubbles. Smiling, his scar white against his pale lips, he knelt beside Teren and said, "I only need a day."
With that comment, he stuck the needle into Teren's thigh and injected the fluid. Teren screamed like he was being pumped full of molten lava. I tried to push the man back, but he was already finished. He stepped away from Teren, leaving him gasping in pain and clutching at his thigh.
"What did you do to him?" I hotly demanded, straining against my restraints in my desire to throttle the man.
Unimpressed by my display, he calmly held the empty syringe in front of him. "This...jumpstarts the conversion. He'll be dead by nightfall." My body went limp with shock and defeat while Teren clenched my hand with renewed strength.
"What? That's not possible..." I whispered, more to myself than the man.
He answered me though. "You both act like he's something special." He shrugged. "He's not. I've been chasing mixed breeds all up and down this country. They're all the same." He held the syringe up to me again, before putting it back in its case. "I cooked this up myself and it always works. It always forces the change, within hours. I even got this to work on a ten year old once." He said that with a look of cold pride, like changing over a child was an accomplishment.
My eyes were glued to the syringe being tucked back into its case. In that one instant, only a single thought echoed in my head and vibrated through my body: The line was dead.
Looking back at Teren clutching his leg in torturous agony, my first thought should have been for his well-being. I should have cared about his fear of dying, of crossing over into that unknown place. I should have cared about the pain that change was going to bring him, although with the pains he'd suffered recently, I was beginning to believe that the dying part might actually be the most relaxing thing he'd felt in a while. I should have cared that Teren's heart was about to stop and his skin was going to cool. I should have instantly cared about being anchored next to a man who was about experience insatiable blood lust.
But I didn't care about that yet. All I cared about, as the man coldly laughed at Teren's discomfort, was my empty womb; that one needle had instantly evaporated any hope of a child. I wasn't pregnant...and now I never would be. I'd never see a black-haired child in my home. I'd never hear Teren's laugh repeated in miniature. I'd never hear a tiny, musical voice say, "I love you, Mommy." My soul ached with the loss.
I knew on some level, that that shouldn't have been relevant right now. Somewhere in my head, I knew I'd never survive this night anyway, so being pregnant or not didn't even matter. But I'd been trying to have Teren's baby for a while now, and forcefully being made to let go of that dream ripped my heart to pieces. A sob escaped me and I sunk my head onto Teren's chest. His breathing had somewhat returned to normal, but his heart was beating wildly. His doomed heart was beating wildly. I sobbed even more.
Teren's hand came up to clutch my back as I mercilessly wept against his chest. The dying man in extraordinary pain was actually trying to soothe me because my uterus was barren. That thought snapped my head back to reality. Wiping my face off on my shirt, I turned to glare at the man standing a few paces away, watching us with a look of amused disgust on his scratchy face.
I was about to let out a stream of vile profanity that would surely be so scathing the man would instantly change his mind about our captivity and let us go. The man opened his mouth and began speaking before I could though. "You must be third generation at least." He reached behind him to grab a chair, then scooted to the edge of the pale circle of light. Half his face was in darkness, and the light half of him seemed all the more menacing because of it. I swallowed back my obscenities and glanced up at Teren. He was eyeing the man with a clenched jaw and lethal intent.
The man didn't seem to care that Teren wasn't participating in the conversation, and he continued to talk to him like he was-some men did so enjoy discussing their work. "Yeah, it's so much harder to spot you guys, when you can hide out in the sunshine." He shook his head. "It's rare to come across a fourth or fifth and I tell you, they are really difficult to tell apart from humans. You pretty much have to watch for them to feed."
I swear my stomach thumped with a phantom baby kick at the man's cruel words. My dry eyes threatened to spill back over with my heart wrenching loss, but I made myself keep full composure. This...thing...before me wouldn't get another second of my tears.
The man scratched his lice-infested jaw, okay, he wasn't lice infested, but the man was disgusting, and it helped stoke the fire in my belly to make him as physically gross as he was morally. "It was a lucky night for me that I went to that baseball game." He tilted his head and eyed Teren with a raised brow. "That was quite a catch...vampire."
My heart seized. Teren and I looked at each other and a moment of Oh God realization passed soundlessly between us. This evil Buffy wannabe had been there that night. He had seen Teren calmly pluck a ball from in front of my face barehanded. No one else in the stadium had made the connection but the one person who had some divine providence to do something about it.
We looked back over at him when his gravelly voice continued, "I followed you after that...just to be sure." Leaning forward on his hands and knees, he spat on the hard-packed dirt. "I followed you to your vampire nest. A ranch? Interesting." He ran a hand along his jaw while I paled at the thought of him anywhere near Teren's family. "I suppose I'll have to clear them out next."
"You son of a bitch!" Teren suddenly exclaimed. He jerked upright, like he was going to attack the man. Unfortunately his body wasn't up for the task, and he immediately crumpled back against the wall, as the pain shot through him.
The man let out a cold laugh as he watched Teren struggle. "Yeah...I didn't go near the property." He tapped a grimy finger against his ear. "I know what you can do. But I figure there are at least two other mixed...and the full vampire, of course." Teren's upper body went rigid as he breathed in and out with as much control as he could muster. I almost expected him to slip out his fangs and hiss at the man. I think if he thought it would do any good, he would have.
The man spat again before laying out his insidious plan. "I'll go in during the day, stake the mixed ones fast, and then torch the vampire while they sleep. Easiest way to rid yourself of a vampire-cleansing through fire while they nap." His lips started to spread into a smile, but then he frowned. "You got humans there? Breeders?" He shrugged. "I suppose I'll have to toss them in the fire too... I really don't relish killing humans, but, God's work must be done."
Teren dropped his mouth in speechlessness. My mind instantly went to my sister and her charred, blistered skin after the horrendous fire that had devastated our family. I couldn't believe someone would willingly impose that cruel fate on another. I pictured Halina's screams as she was awoken from a deep sleep. I imagined Jack's flesh melting, muscle sliding away from the bone...
I stood and nearly yanked my arm from my socket as I made a move for the man. He only turned his head a small fraction to glance at me in apathy. That disregarding look ignited my already flaring temper. "I'm going to fillet you! You will never touch them! Never!"
I futilely struggled against the cuffs; the iron bar scraped in protest with my furious movements. Finally, the man walked over to me. Teren tried to grab him, but he effortlessly scooted away from his grasp. Coming up to the other side of me, away from Teren, he clamped my throat in his big hands and harshly smacked my head against the wall. Dazed and seeing stars dance in my vision, I slumped down the wall in defeat. Teren immediately put his hand on the back of my head. I felt the wetness there and knew I was bleeding. My vampire would be aware of that too. He snapped his head around to the man calmly walking back to his chair. A low growl rumbled in his chest as his fangs slid out; he looked ready to tear the man to pieces.
The man only laughed again. "Ahhh...there's the beast. I was wondering if he'd show up to the party." He pointed at where Teren was still issuing a lethal growl from deep in his chest. "I've been biding my time, waiting to collect you and your whore. You provided me the perfect opportunity, by telling your friends and coworkers that you were going away for weeks..." He shrugged and a happy look crossed his hard face. "Thank you for that. No one is going to miss you for a long time. I'll be on the other side of the country before the police are even called...not that they'll ever find your bodies."