Anna was gone.
I was trained to handle situations like this. And this was an extremely fragile situation, where one more wrong move would cost me my best friend’s life. As Dmitri and Emilia approached me with drinks, I kept my cool, calmly analyzing my surroundings and beginning to show a little bit of concern on my features. Soon, they would get the hint that something was wrong, and assume that it had to do with Anna, but what they wouldn’t assume was that I knew who had taken her.
“Did Blondie go to the bathroom?” Dmitri asked, laughing a little. That nickname struck a nerve in me, but my expression remained flat. V had called Anna Blondie. Now he had her.
Calm. Collective.
I was in control, not V.
“Yeah, she wanted to fix her makeup,” I finally said with an innocent shrug, nonchalantly sipping one of the drinks Emilia held out to me. Dmitri and Emilia both looked concerned now. I wasn’t sure if either of them worked for V, but I would find out soon enough. Luckily, I tended to lie a hell of a lot better than every other human. “I actually need to use the bathroom as well. Please, excuse me.”
And just like that, I turned and walked away from the two oddly friendly vampires, but even with my back turned, I was aware of every gaze on me in that club, every slip of their leechy tongues over their leechy lips, admiring the human walking past them. I was normally this aware. I always had control over my environment.
And just like that, V had momentarily taken that control of the situation. Now Anna was in the hands of a possible psychopath.
If only I had won that game of rock, paper, and scissors with her, she would have never been taken.
Vampires had an incredible sense of smell and sight. Not only that, but they could see perfectly in the dark club, to the point that I was sure any vampire, from every corner of the room, could see the steady rhythm of a vein on the side of my neck slowly and regularly pulsing in alignment with my heartbeat.
I scanned my surroundings once I was on higher ground. Dmitri and Emlia were conversing with a couple on a couch. They didn’t follow me.
Where they pawns in V’s set up for me, or did they know about it all along?
Then it hit me.
V was the one who was watching me. That’s exactly what someone of his kind would do in a situation like this: the enigmatic, dangerous kind of vampire. Watch me from afar, like an experiment, while Anna was stored somewhere safe. He wouldn’t kill her. If he killed her, he wouldn’t have any leverage. Leverage. That’s exactly what he wanted. He wanted me to come to him, like a good little kitten, and then I would get my treat. This was a game to a vampire like V. Vampires were to sadistic to do anything less but watch a human suffer.
But I wasn’t any ordinary human.
He had my best friend. Never in my life was I so mad. Still, I calmly pretended to sip my drink, weaving between people in the club, taking in faces. Memorizing them.
Where are you, V? I thought.
On the inside, my heartbeat was steady but my mind was racing and my hands were beginning to get clammy. The strobe lights above me were becoming disorienting. It was too hot, too. I started to picture Anna and wondered if she was afraid and screaming for me to help her, or worse, dead. Now the room was closing in on me. I threw myself into a back room of the club, where there was a wall of stalls with curtains. I assumed this was a feeding area and swallowed a lump the size of a cantaloupe in my throat as a handsome vampire with brown eyes entered the room, brushing his arm against me and giving me a long, heated once over, before entering one of the stalls.
I started to back away from the room, when suddenly, I could have sworn I felt the brush of a hand on my shoulder, and a silky voice whisper huskily in my ear, “Here, kitty, kitty,” and I swung around sharply, my hand ready to unleash a stake from my dress, but there was nobody there.
Once again, I no longer felt in control. I looked down at my drink, sniffed it, and then tossed it sharply to the side. I couldn’t remember if I had taken a sip by accident or not, since I had been pretending to drink since the moment I had arrived at the club.
Had Dmitri and Emilia spiked my drink with something?
I started to check myself for any signs of being drugged. My mouth wasn’t dry. My equilibrium was balanced. I took a deep breath, let it out, then adventured further into the feeding room, pushing past a thick black curtain into another dimmer, colder room. In a brief moment of frustration, I became tangled in the thick curtain, my hands shoving against the smooth, silken velvet material.
I was alone in the room, so I took out two long, silver stakes from my thigh straps. If anyone saw me with them, from here on out, I would kill them without thinking twice.
“Here, kitty, kitty.”
I inclined my head to the side, moving quietly around the room, brushing against the walls with my back, checking for a light switch. I couldn’t turn my back to any corner of the room because it was too dark. It wasn’t my imagination. That was surely V’s voice, and he was talking to me inside of my head. I chose not to reply to it. If I replied, he would think of the situation as even more of a game.
“Mmmm!”
Startled, my eyes darted to a particular spot of the room where there was a shadow darker than the rest of the room. It was muffled, but the voice had been Anna’s. There was no light switch in the room. The music in the club pounded against the walls. My hands slightly shook as I turned on my night vision sunglasses.
Why was I afraid? My body was surely betraying me.
The room was practically empty with a TV, and dark carpet. It was certainly some sort of lounge that was rarely used. I said the room was practically empty, but there was Anna, sitting on the floor by the window with her ankles and wrists tied together like a pretzel. There was Anna, a mere twenty feet away from me. There was Anna, with her eyes wide in horror and her body shaking in fear. She virtually couldn’t move any part of her body but her head, locked in a fettle position. It was a cruel, almost dominating position to leave anyone in, but there she was, and I just couldn’t bring myself to come any closer to her.
I finally found a light switch in the room and flicked it on, and that’s when I realized Anna had been staring at something in particular in the room. I moved my gaze over to the entrance of the room, my body naturally moving into a defensive position. The black curtain I had felt entering the room hadn’t been a curtain at all. It had been a cape, of sorts, and it had been tied around an upside down villain, who was hanging like a bat from the ceiling.
“Found me," a voice announced playfully.
He dropped down from the ceiling in one fluid motion, feet silently hitting the floor next to a decapitated vampire body. Vampire's only exploded into ashes if their heart was invovled in their death. My mind instantly started to calculate ways to take this vampire down. He must have been at least six foot six and twice my weight in muscle, and somehow, those were the least intimidating qualities about him. His hair was a shade of chestnut and a perfect mix of wavy and curly, with a few strands twirled over his forehead and around his ears. Avoiding those eyes was close to impossible. They were a glacier blue and shaped a bit exotically, drawing you in with an attraction stronger than the sun’s pull in our solar system. My photographic memory recognized those eyes as the eyes of the stranger with the glasses who had stared at me quickly over a computer monitor in the library.
“V,” I said steadily, staring at his nose and not his eyes. “You’re V.” It wouldn’t have made a difference if I had looked at them, anyway, since he was eying up my exposed legs in my dress. “Did you steal Anna just to get me in a room with you?”
“Yes,” he admitted, his eyes trying to meet mine. Who knew what he would do once our eyes connected. Eye contact gave vampires an unlimited amount of control over a human.
“Did you kill that vampire?” I had to remain in control. Remain confident. Remain fearless. Even if every inch of my body wanted to quiver in terror.
He drank in my body again, a slow smile of a predator lining his gorgeous face. “Does the Tin Man have a tin foil d*ck?” His cape swung with his large body as he moved towards me. He would have towered over me, had I not kept an equal distance between us, putting myself between Anna and him.
"You could have just said yes."
Once V realized I was not planning on letting him get close, he stopped and raised a dark eyebrow. “Yes, yes I did kill that vampire, kitten. He walked into the room, started to make a fuss, so I ripped his head off. Didn’t want any questions.”
Ripped his head off. Normal. “Questions about what?”
He motioned to Anna and I felt stupid for even asking. Two bulky looking vampires in suits had entered the room. Now it was three against one. I didn’t especially like those odds.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” V said, watching my reaction to the two visitors carefully. “Your friend is fine. For now.” He smiled coldly at Anna. “Aren’t you fine, Blondie?”
Anna’s terrified expression was etched deeply into her features. She had probably watched V decapitate the vampire. Who knew what was running through her head.
“She won’t be fine, if you don’t cooperate. I don’t have to touch her to kill Anna. You’ve already seen what I can do with just my mind. It would be in your best interest to follow my instructions.” The vampire’s wintry gaze fell to the stakes gripped tightly in my hands. “Put the stakes down on the ground, Violet.”
“Not happening,” I growled out.
“Very well.” V didn’t even move and Anna let out a cry of pain.
“Ok!” I shouted, dropping the stakes. “Stop, ok! I dropped the damn stakes!”
Anna went silent.
“Excellent.” V’s arctic eyes slid intimidatingly over my entire body. The next thing my “benefactor” would say would change my life evermore. “We can’t discuss what I want to discuss with you in this environment. I want to talk to you in private, where I don’t have to lure you in. I want you to come willingly, too.”
I ground my teeth together. “What environment do you suggest?”
“I want you to have dinner with me.”
“Well I want to have Kim Kardashian’s ass and Kourtney Kardashian’s husband, but that’s never happening, now is it, Fang Face?”
I had never seen someone become so furious so quickly in my life. “Attack.”
Unexpectedly, the two bulky vampires had me by the arms, pinning me painfully in my place. Without hesitation, I started to pretend sob, confusing the two men entirely, then I smashed my hip into the one vampire, activating a button on the hunter gear beneath my dress. Small darts filled with holy water shot out of my outfit and into the both of the vampire’s sternums. Once they were keeled over in agony, I took a small stake out from between my breasts and staked both of them rapidly in the chest.
Anna was now rocking back and forth, muffled cheers sounding from beneath the fabric in her mouth. Her revolutionary bra stake holder had come in clutch.
I lost sight of V as more vampires swarmed into the room, fangs out, hissing wildly. Staking after staking, I took on one vampire at a time. I kicked up both of the stakes on the ground with my toe and grabbed them mid-air, hurling them both across the room towards two vampires and nailing them right in the chest. While I did that, a vampire came up behind me and slammed their palm into the back of my head, knocking me forward. I felt a blow to my stomach from a vampire’s boot and grimaced, biting down on my lip and tasting blood. Another vampire landed a punch to my face. Two more vampires lifted me off the ground, pinning me in my place again as others searched me for weapons.
This time, I didn’t have any tricks up my sleeve.
My dress started to get torn off as I went in and out of unconsciousness, which would leave only the full bulletproof, fang-proof, and one-piece black protective suit covering my naked flesh, which looked a lot like a one-piece bathing suit. Beneath my dress was throwing knives and other small gadgets that I kept on me at all times.
“Enough! Don’t undress her or I’ll rip your head off!” I heard V command and a frightening voice.
“She’s still armed,” one of the vampire’s said.
“I’ll handle it,” V growled. “Release the blonde one into the streets. I’m taking the hunter with me.”
Anna screamed out to me. I used the rest of my fleeting consciousness to pry my eyes open, watching her get dragged out of the room by two strangers.
I slipped into nothingness.
* * *
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