Diary of An Unnatural (BOOK #2)

Locked Up

            "I'm guessing you enjoyed your little exposure therapy just as much as I did?" Hansen asked me.

            I leaned my head on the back wall and groaned. My limbs aches, my throat burned, my incisors dug into my bottom lip. I could barely open my eyes to see the dark cage around me. Whatever Derek had injected into my veins, had knocked me out for I didn't know how long.

            "I know, I know," Hansen went on. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

            I attempted to move my arms, which were shackled above my head, and my muscles were on fire.

            "What did they do to me?" I said through my clenched teeth.

            "Injected you with something I'm guessing."

            And then everything started coming back to me. My mother insisting on a cure. Calling me a monster, an abomination. Derek circling me like a hawk, but there was something else in his eyes. Pity. He felt sorry for me. For the girl who didn't get to live her life like a normal teenager should. For the girl who was turned into a monster without her permission. For the girl whose mother hated what she was.

            And then I attacked her. That was where my memories stopped.

            I heard screams come from somewhere in the building. Someone threw something against the wall. Someone else screeched back.

            "What's going on?" I asked Hansen. "What happened?"

            Hansen opened his mouth to reply, but someone else in the room spoke first.

            "I think I can answer that," an accented female voice said.

            I squinted into the darkness, which was unnecessary with my newfound vampire senses. Jane sat tattered against the wall, her hands shackled to the floor unlike mine. Her blonde her was a mess around her dirt-covered face.

            "Jane?"

            "Before you start asking questions, yes, I came here to rescue you. And no, William didn't tell me to. Actually he was very against it. For some reason, he thought I would get myself locked up as well. Which this time, I guess he was right."

            "You came here for me? But how-"

            "Your sister." Another sound of clamber from another room. "I don't think your mother was very happy with Val siding with a vampire."

            I straightened up against the wall. "Val's here?"

            "Of course. She didn't want her poor sister to rot in here. And before you ask, no, she didn't know anything about this. She said the Hunters were keeping her in the dark."

            Another thought occurred to me. "What about Luke? Is he still with the others?"

            A new look crossed her face. If she was human, she might've even blushed. An odd feeling echoed in my stomach.

            She stared straight ahead. "He's down the road waiting for us."

            "You brought him?" Rage flew inside of me. "Why would you-?"

            "I was bringing him home," she said in a near whisper. "I had every intention to leave him at Val's where I knew it would be safe, but he insisted on coming to save you. So, I left him in the best place I could think of with his insistence. You know Hunters have abilities to distract other Hunter from their whereabouts. It's a game to them, hunting vampires. Only in the last two hundred years have they started joining each other."

            "So he's safe," I presumed.

            "As safe as can be," Jane insisted. "As long as he does as I told him and stays in your sister's car."

            "And you think he will?"

            She pulled her knees into her chest. "If he knows what's good for him."

            Then another scent entered the room. Derek walked in, arms crossed, expression unfazed by a group of vampires who probably wanted him dead.

            "What do you want now, Derek?" Jane huffed. "To take me out again?"

            His lips curled up in a smile that oozed sarcasm. "Sorry, love. You're the least of my concerns right now. You're just collateral at the moment."

            Jane rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Derek. You wouldn't kill me, would you? There's too much of a past between us."

            "Actually," Derek walked towards her cell. "You're probably one of the only people I could kill and not feel much of anything."

            I looked back and forth between the both of them before Hansen let out a loud cackle.

            "Do I sense a lover spat between the two of you?" he asked them.

            Derek turned to Hansen. "That would imply that we were ever in love. When, in fact, Jane only used me for her own game. You see, we go way back."

            "Not that far back," Jane chirped. "Only a few years ago. And you are the one who betrayed me. After all, you're the Hunter."

            I finally found words. My mind whirred with questions and scenes and events and words. I closed my eyes and opened them over and over again, squeezing them shut to see if I could wake up at home away from this madness.

            "Let me get this straight," I said. "You two..."

            "Yes," Jane sighed. "My mistake of course. Believe it or not, at one point in my existence I was just as naive as you. And I decided to trust a Hunter."

            Derek let out a weak chuckle. "And I was stupid enough to trust a vampire."