Chapter Fourteen
I awoke the next morning at the incredibly early time of seven a.m. I know, you're probably thinking, well that's not so early, but it is really early for someone who slays vampires all night and usually doesn't get to sleep until three or so. What had woken me was not my alarm, which was set to go off at nine, but the rustling of the bedroom window curtains. I sat up in bed, tired, but alert. I would have never gone to sleep with the window unlocked, much less open. As I got up I grabbed the gun out from under my pillow. I didn't usually sleep with a gun, but after the week I had had, I figured it didn't hurt to be a little extra cautious. In just my tank-top and shorts, I padded to the window, sweeping the room as I did so. The doors to both the bedroom and the bathroom were shut. I was alone in the room. But the window was open and therefore I knew, that for the second time this week, someone had broken into my apartment.
I looked out the window to see nothing but the empty alleyway below, and the apartment across the way from mine. Nothing sinister out there. I went through the entire apartment before I could convince myself that I was alone. It wasn't until I was coming back into the bedroom to put the gun away that I noticed it lying on the floor. The envelope that read, "Kayla." Cautiously, with gun still cocked and ready to fire, I bent down and picked up the envelope. It was small, and very light. So it wasn't a bomb. Hey, don't look at me like that--you can never be too careful. Since I didn't really think anyone would bother with poisons or biochemics or anything like that, I figured I could probably open the envelope safely now.
Inside the envelope there was a small piece of paper that bore a small note. I read it out loud, and even then it sent chills down my spine. "You have one week." There was no doubt as to who it was from. I almost threw it away, but then thought better of it. Maybe if I showed it to Stavros, he could take care of it. Did I really think that a vampire--even one as powerful as Stravros--could take care of Vann? No, not really. But it was a better plan than just giving up, right?
I don't know how long I stood there, staring at the paper with the pretty and obviously female writing, before I heard a knock at the door. I grabbed my gun and, letter still in hand, walked into the living room. Chase didn't react at all when I opened the door with a gun, but he was intrigued by the paper crumpled in my hand. "What's with the paper?" he asked.
I didn't say anything, just handed it to him. He read it twice silently before looking up at me. "What the hell is this supposed to mean?"
"Someone left it in my bedroom while I was asleep," I told him. "The same someone that broke into my apartment the other day, I suspect."
"Are you going to show this to Stavros?" Chase asked.
"What could he do?" How could I make Chase understand just how powerful Vann was, just how good at her job she was? She had been slaying vampires for years. When I first became a vampire slayer, I heard stories about her, and Elle, and Cassandra. About how they had been through so much supernatural shit that they weren't human any more. I hadn't believed it then. Now, it didn't seem like just another tall tale.
Chase shrugged. "Besides moving you into the lair? Put some bodyguards on you, have people scouring the city for this woman. Maybe he can't do anything at all, but isn't it worth a shot? What if she finds you alone, Kayla? Do you really think you could take her on and win?"
Damn him. Damn him to hell for being right. I hated being wrong, especially about my own safety. But more than that, I hated it when someone was right about my inability to protect myself. Because if a girl can’t protect herself, then what good is she? Shaking my head, I shoved the paper in my shorts pocket. No time to worry about it now. I’d worry about it when–not if, but when–I saw Vann again.
Chase and I spent the next few hours going through my personal belongings, deciding what was to go and what was to get left behind. We filled the back of his Jeep with boxes. My entire life crammed into the back of a Wrangler. Somehow it just seemed so unfair. After we made sure all the boxes had been put in the Jeep we went back through the apartment, on the pretense of looking for things that might have been missed during the first packing. In reality, I think it was Chase’s way of giving me an excuse to say my goodbyes without feeling stupid.
I walked from room to room, looking in nooks and crannies for any belongings I might want to take with me to my new home. When I found none, I would stand in the room for a few moments and just remember the short, yet memorable, time I had spent there. Silly, I know, but that little apartment had been my home for three years. Like it or not, I couldn’t just walk out and leave. Passing from room to room, Chase would cross my path a few times. No words were spoken, but he would give me a small smile before moving on. I guess he knew that I needed some time before he dragged me off to live with the vampires.
I still hadn’t gotten used to that.
It was in the bedroom that I actually did find something I had forgotten, although I think I had subconsciously forgotten it on purpose. It was on the top shelf of the closet, where it had been collecting dust for probably the whole three years that I had lived there. It was a picture, frame and all, of Cassie and I, taken not but a few months before her untimely death. In the picture we were both laughing, a happy gleam to our eyes, huddled together under an umbrella as it rained on us. I did not remember who had snapped a shot of us as we were being soaked through to the bone, but it hadn’t turned out bad, as I thought it would have at the time.
As I stared at Cassie’s smiling face, I felt a stinging behind my eyes. I would not cry. I wouldn’t. Crying can’t bring the dead back to life; otherwise we’d have a major population problem. I kept looking at the picture, fighting tears, my last memory of Cassie playing over and over in my mind. A constant reel of frightened eyes, bloody skin, and screams of terror. How I wished my last memory of one of my best friends could have been of something happy, instead of a gruesome and horrible death. I don’t know how long I stared at that stupid picture, but in a sudden moment the world came into sharp focus, and the frame was in pieces, the glass sharp and cutting against my palms. I shrieked, dropping the pieces of picture frame to the ground. Why had I suddenly zoned out like that? Had I broken the picture frame?
“Did you just scream?” Chase asked, appearing in the doorway.
“Yeah, I’m fine though,” I answered. “I just cut myself.”
“You need me to help you clean it?” he asked. I was tempted to say yes, but I didn’t trust myself to be that close to him because, hey, he was wearing those jeans I liked.
“No, I got it,” I said. Holding my hand, I walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light, getting a small blood smear on the wall. “Ew,” I muttered as I ran my hands under cold water to wash some of the blood off. Was it just me, or was that stupid cut bleeding more than was normal? As I was washing the blood off, I snuck a glance up at the mirror, and what I saw made me suck in a sharp breath. “Shit!” I said, taking a step back from the mirror and the sink.
What the mirror was reflecting back at me couldn’t possibly be real, for behind me stood Mikhail himself, smiling maliciously. “Hello, slayer,” he said, his voice clear as day. I turned around; no one was behind me. I was alone in the bathroom. Even so, when I turned back to the mirror, his reflection was still there.
“What do you want?” I said, half of me truly curious to know, and the other half feeling stupid because I was talking to a mirror.
“Your blood calls to me,” the reflection said, and I watched as his fingertips trailed up my arm. I couldn’t feel his skin against mine, but if he truly wasn’t there, then why did were there chills going up my arm? “It lets me know where you are.”
“No,” I said, although I didn’t know what I was saying no to, not really.
“Oh, yes,” he said, a smirk still on his face. “I have tasted your blood, Kayla. It gives us a special bond. Once I taste more, you shall belong to me.”
“No,” I said again, louder this time. He laughed, his face close to my neck. I shivered, because although I had not been able to feel his touch, I could feel his hot breath on the nape of my neck. Dear God, was I hallucinating? Or was this actually happening? As I looked into Mikhail’s eyes I could feel myself being sucked in. I tried to fight it, but he was so much stronger than I was.
Suddenly, the scene changed. I was no longer in my bathroom. Instead, I was in a warehouse in San Francisco, surrounded by vampires and death...
In the blink of an eye, he was gone. One minute I was looking right at him, and the next he had just disappeared. I whirled about madly, trying to figure out where he had gone. And then I heard a scream. I saw Cassie, eyes bright with fear. Mikhail had ahold of her from behind, pinning her arms and weapons to her sides. She closed her eyes and whimpered as his tongue flicked out, licking up the blood that was oozing out of a cut just above her eye.
"My, my, what shall you do, Kayla?" Mikhail asked in a mocking tone. "Don't move--I'll kill her if you come one step closer. Your student is very pretty. She'd make a beautiful vampire, would she not?"
Cassie's eyes flew open upon hearing she'd make a beautiful vampire. She looked to me with a pleading in her gaze that was so intense, I'm surprised it didn't knock me over. I knew how much Cassie hated vampires--that was the reason she was an orphan. Her parents had been brutally murdered by a group of renegade vampires when she was ten. She had been at a friend's house for the evening; if she had been home, she would have been slaughtered, too. Just because I knew how much she hated vampires didn't mean I was happy with what I saw in her gaze. With just her eyes, she was begging me to kill her. She was begging me to kill her before she was made into the monster she hated the most.
I wasn't sure I could do it.
I mean, killing vampires was nothing. But killing Cassie? Shooting an arrow through her heart? Putting a bullet in her brain? Could I bring myself to kill an innocent human, especially an innocent human whom I had become so attached to?
"You're struggling, Kayla," Mikhail's hissing voice broke through my thoughts. He gestured to someone I couldn't see, and a vampire rushed at me before I knew what was happening. The bow was knocked from my hands and skidded across the floor. The vampire gave me a good round-house to the jaw, and I fell sprawled on the floor. Pain exploded in my head like fireworks. I scrambled to my hands and knees, attempting to get back on my feet but failing because I was so dizzy. Mikhail laughed at my efforts.
Mikhail's pale hand trailed its way up Cassie's body in a gesture that was almost purely sexual. Bile rose in my throat. I regained some of my balance back, and made it to my feet before a tall, black-haired vampire grabbed me and pinned me against him. I suddenly realized I was probably better off lying on the floor. Now, pinned against this vampire's body, I had a clear view of everything that Mikhail was doing to Cassie.
Mikhail's hand made its way over Cassie's breast and up to her throat. His fingers curled around her neck and he raked his nails across it, not slitting her throat but drawing blood. She started crying. He turned her so that she was facing him. Since I was at sort of a sideways angle, I could still see everything, but I wished to God I couldn't. Mikhail licked the cut that was producing the most blood. Cassie cringed away from him, but he followed, his tongue lapping up the blood that was running like a waterfall down to her shirt.
It happened too quickly for me to even register it in my mind. One moment Mikhail was lapping up the blood from Cassie's neck like a morbid dog, and the next his fangs were bared and he was sinking them into the front of her throat. He bit as hard as he could and pulled his head back, bringing flesh with him. He ripped Cassie's throat out, and I couldn't help but watch.
I was paralyzed. My brain was telling my body to move, but I couldn't make myself get up off the floor. Mikhail tossed Cassie's body away like it was a broken toy--maybe it was to him, I don't know. The body spasmed on the cold stone before going completely still. My magical training told me it would actually take hours--days even--for Cassie's soul to leave her body, but to me she was already dead. I did the only thing I could do. I screamed. I screamed so loud that if there had been any glass around, it probably would have shattered. I screamed because Cassie was dead, and because I knew I was next.
Suddenly I was on my feet, in Mikhail's arms. He was all that was supporting me so that I didn't fall to the floor. He looked at me in an almost loving manner. He brushed a stray lock of red hair from my eyes. I struggled in his grasp, and he chuckled at my attempts. He seemed to be doing a lot of laughing at me. Was I really that pathetic? "Kayla, Kayla, Kayla..." He was whispering, but it was more for dramatic effect than anything. We both knew that every vampire in the room with us could hear what he was saying. "This could have all been avoided, my love, had you just accepted my proposition in the first place."
"It doesn't matter now." It was my voice, yet it wasn't. Like I wasn't really the one talking; someone else was talking through my voice. "Cassie's dead; nothing matters now."
He smiled, baring long, delicate fangs at me. "Are you so sure about that?" He turned me around ever so gently in his arms so that I could see what he had been seeing; see what was happening behind me. My breath caught in my throat. Cassie was standing, looking at me, smiling. She was so beautiful. Still covered in blood and gore, but insanely beautiful. I could tell by the way she moved towards me that she was no longer injured. Her skin was so pale it was almost white, and a vivid sky blue was bleeding through her eyes. And her throat...the wound that should have been there from Mikhail ripping out her throat was gone, the skin perfectly intact.
I knew in that moment that none of this was happening. This wasn't real; it was all a dream! She hadn't been turned into a vampire. This was just a dream. A nightmare. I kept chanting that in my mind. It's just a dream, it's just a dream, it's just a dream...
"A nightmare it may be," a voice hissed in my ear, "but I assure you it is very much real." Mikhail's breath was hot against my throat. He licked the skin at the hollow of my neck. "I have drank from you," he said softly. "We are tied, you and I. I plant all these images in your mind, make you relive these horrors. Look at her and tell me what you see isn't real."
I looked at Cassie again. Really looked at her. She smiled, and it was horrible. Evil. She laughed and the sound felt like a thousand fingers brushing up against the inside of my skull. "How could you hold out on me, Kayla?" she asked. "Being a vampire is so much more than you made it out to be. It's like being born again. Don't refuse him anymore, Kayla. Come home and be one of us."
I shook my head and struggled against Mikhail's hold. "No!" I cried. "I won't! I'll die before I become one of you."
They both laughed; a rich, melodic sound. "Oh, die you shall," Mikhail told me. "But I promise, you'll enjoy it." He bit me, and searing pain went throughout my body, so I did the only thing I seemed to be any good at anymore.
I screamed.
xXxXxXxXxXx
“Kayla? Kayla, snap out of it!”
I was on the floor of my bathroom, but I didn’t remember how I had gotten there. I was laying halfway on the floor, halfway in Chase’s lap. He had a hold of me and was shaking me, trying to bring me out of my delirious state. “Oh, my God,” I whispered when I finally had a grip on all of my functions. I was shaking almost violently, and Chase hugged me to him.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “You were screaming so loudly.”
I didn’t answer right away, because I was transfixed by the way my blood looked, bright red against his white T-shirt. It was all over him. What had happened while I was reliving my worst memory? I suddenly felt trapped, like the apartment wasn’t big enough to hold all my emotional shit. And maybe it wasn’t. I buried my face in the crook of Chase’s neck, afraid of what might happen if he let me go. “Get me out of here,” I said softly. He didn’t argue. He didn’t ask questions. Instead he picked me up, and carried me all the way to his Jeep. I couldn’t have gotten away from that apartment faster.
