Penny woke up in the black of night riding in a vehicle. She tried to get her bearings and noticed that she was lying next to another person.
"Charles?" she asked, remembering that she had been attacked and drugged by a vampire. She hoped that someone had been able to save her.
"Ha, no Charles here," a female said in a deeply sarcastic voice. Penny drowsily looked up and saw the face of a vampire. She laid her head back down on the seat. It was just her luck to be the one captured by vampires.
The vampire punched her in the stomach. Penny flinched.
"Priscilla, I think we should avoid beating our guest too much." The voice sounded like the vampire who had come to her rescue earlier with the werewolves. So she was in a car with two of the vampires who had killed her family. Penny tried to think about her miserable options. She couldn't really think of any options at the moment. She would have even taken a bad option right now.
"I'll do what I want with her," Priscilla snapped back.
"I would just not speak anymore. We want her in good condition for bartering," the Matriarch said from the other side of Priscilla. "If the Brotherhood thinks that she is dead or half dead, they won't come back for her."
"I don't see why you think they will come get her," Priscilla said with a half snort. "They always leave their own behind."
"I said that I didn't want you to speak," the Matriarch said in a tone of finality.
"Charles will come get her," the male interjected into the conversation. "He'll lead a whole crusade for her."
"And then you'll all be sorry," Penny said, mustering all the strength she had left in her. Priscilla retaliated with a swift club of her fist to Penny's skull. Penny slipped back into unconsciousness.
Penny stirred from her forced slumber. She had been out of consciousness since the crazy female vampire, Priscilla, had knocked her out. She had no idea if it was night or day. Or where in the world she was being kept. She was still in one piece, but she had quite a headache.
So much for not harming the merchandise, she thought. She was still not quite in her right mind yet.
"Hi, there!" said a chipper voice from across the room. She was in no mood for upbeat people. She turned over and gasped for air. She looked to see a cage-like prison cell. Her cell looked like a dungeon out of a bad vampire movie. Vampires were never very good at dispelling stereotypes. She looked past the bars and gazed upon the face of the vampire who had killed her family. Penny suddenly regained her strength and lunged for him and caught him by the shirt. His pointed teeth came very close to her face. She could see the shine of his fangs as he smiled at her.
"You killed my family!" Penny still had a grip on his shirt. She wanted to pull hard enough to strangle him.
"Sorry, sometimes these things just happen," he said, still smiling and about five inches from her face; only the bars of her cell kept their noses from touching.
Penny released his shirt. She didn't want to be that close to that beast. "Quit smiling," she said. His smile was very disconcerting to her.
"You are being rather bossy for someone in prison," he said and readjusted the shirt that Penny had ruffled. He dropped his forehead back onto the bars. His floppy, curly hair flew through the bars. He rested his hands on the bars as he spoke to her. "I am happy, as I usually am, and when people are happy, they usually smile. At least that is the custom here. I know the Brotherhood is a little uptight."
"Let me out!" Penny banged against the door, but the vampire didn't budge.
"Look, I'm not going to hurt you," he said as he lifted his head from the bars but still kept his eyes on her angry gaze. "I know you don't trust me, so I'll make this first encounter brief. I just wanted to know how Charles is doing."
"You leave him alone!" Penny could never stand losing Charles, especially after losing her family. He was all she had left.
"Easy, there; you are a feisty one, aren't you? Charles told me about you in his letters. He told me he understood why I left you alone that night. I have a thing for feisty women you know."
"Letters?" No, Charles wouldn't send him letters. She backed away from the bars. No, she resolved, he was just trying to get in her head. "You have never even met my Charles!"
"Your Charles?" The vampire chuckled to himself. "So he decided again to steal the girl that I liked. Just like him. The girls always like Charles – perfect hair, suave, charming, and mysterious. No one ever liked goofy, nerdy Thomas."
"What are you rambling about, you stupid monster," Penny said. She raised both of her eyebrows in total confusion.
"Old family feud," he replied. He took his hands off the bars and backed up a little from the cell.
"What are you talking about?" Penny shook her head. She almost felt bad for the rambling vampire. He seemed disorganized and lost.
"You had a sister, right? An older sister?" he asked.
"You should know; you killed her!" Penny stopped feeling bad for him. He was calculating how to piss her off the most.
"Sorry, soft spot, but actually that wasn't me. That was Priscilla."
"What does my sister have to do with this?" She really didn't want to talk about her family with this monster, but she was not in a position to choose the topic of conversation.
"You two were arguing that night about another boy that you liked that she stole from you, right?"
Penny winced. She remembered all too vividly that the last thing she'd said to her sister was that she hated her. She nodded.
"Well, Charles has always stolen the girls that I liked. And it was worse than your... predicament. Charles was my little brother! Three years my junior. He started stealing high school girls from me while he was just starting middle school. It was miserable!"
"Your brother?" Penny asked. Now she was getting a little confused.
"Little brother."
"No, that isn't right. Charles's family was all killed by vampires almost ten years ago," she said. Penny decided that the vampire was just trying to confuse her. She wasn't sure why he wanted her confused, but she wasn't going to give in to his control.
"No, and yes. We are vampires. Mom couldn't hack it all and after a couple months...threw herself into an incinerator." The vampire stopped for a moment, and a sad look replaced his ever-present smile. "Dad hasn't been quite the same after that. Charles's twin, Charlotte, has taken to being a vampire better than the rest of us, except she misses that whole twin mystical bond thing with good ol' Chuck. I can't say I'm unhappy. I get to read all that I want. This no sleeping thing would have been great back in high school and wonderful for college."
"Twin?" Certainly Charles would have mentioned a twin before. He never talked about his family at all, though. Penny shook her head. She was not going to fall for this vampire's trick.
"Look, you picked the mysterious, reticent one, mon petit chou; don't go complaining now that you are just figuring out that you don't know a thing about him."
Penny backed up and sat on the floor, totally mystified by her conversation. She looked up at the vampire who had killed her family. He was right. He had Charles pegged: mysterious, reticent. Plus, the way Charles had behaved with this vampire at the party. They acted like brothers.
"Look, I really am sorry about your family. I lost my brother and my mother too, okay? I just came down here to see how my little brother is doing." He let out a long sigh after he spoke.
"You're the one that gets letters." Penny crossed her arms and folded her knees up to her chest.
"I know, but it's hard to get a read on how he's really doing from those. As you are figuring out, he's not very divulging."
"You just want to kill me and use me to get at the Brotherhood," Penny said as she turned her back on the vampire.
"No, Penny, I've actually saved your life four times!" he said. He grabbed the bars to her cell.
"Four times? I haven't even met you twice," Penny said, about to fly into a rage. She ran up to the bars and slapped him.
Thomas touched his cheek, where any human man would have had a red mark. "Perhaps I should stay away from the bars," the vampire said and giggled. The giggle sounded familiar to Penny, but she just couldn't believe that this vampire was the same man who had saved her on numerous occasions. "I should have properly introduced myself from the start. So hello, Penny, it's nice to see you again. I'm sorry I didn't get to introduce myself properly the first three, four times we met, but considering the...action that was happening.... But my name is Thomas Wolf, and I'm really no good at being a vampire."
"Thomas? Like..." Penny started to say but was rather confused. She suddenly realized where she remembered the giggle from. Her instincts at the party had been correct. It was Thomas, her humorous friend who always came to her rescue. It would explain the odd behavior between Charles and the vampire in the ballroom and the even stranger exchange in the backroom. The disjointed pieces that never started to make sense, like how Thomas could jump out of a six story building, all started to fall into place. Perhaps she had never wanted to see before that Thomas was a vampire.
"Yes, like the one from the werewolves and the library vampires. The driver you said couldn't be serious. And yes, you're probably right; I have a terrible time being serious."
Penny backed away from her prison door and fell back onto the lousy excuse for a bed. She liked Thomas. But Thomas was involved in her family's murder. "Please, just go away; I need time," she said, barely audible.
"Penny," Thomas said as he reached a pale hand into her cell.
"No, just go." Penny fought back a tear.
"I'm sorry," he said. He backed up from the barred door and went out of the room.
Penny's mind raced with possibilities. Why would a vampire help the Brotherhood one minute then capture a member another minute? Why would Charles send letters to a vampire? The whys made her head spin, so she lay down and curled up in a ball. As she cried herself to sleep, the only thought that kept coming into her head was of her family. She'd do anything for her family; so would Charles. But she was still mad, and more than anything she felt betrayed by the only two men she trusted.
"Penny, are you okay?" Thomas was standing outside her cell again.
Penny jerked up from her fitful sleep. "Why do you care?"
"Because you're important to me. I like you," Thomas replied. "I haven't saved your butt many times for no reason."
"You killed my family!" Penny was never in a good mood when she was woken up.
"No, no, I didn't. I tried to save them. I never kill when I eat. It...it just went awry with Priscilla there. And you girls were up fighting about that boy, and then your parents came in to break up the fight just as we were...look, I didn't want it to end that way. I told Priscilla, but....I could only save one of you! I was one vampire among five. I pushed you in the closet and barred it with my body; I wept while your family was butchered in front of me. I cannot get those scenes out of my mind. Not ever! You only heard it, but I had to see it. And it reminded me of my own murder."
"I don't believe you," Penny said with tears in her eyes.
"Look, Penny, I want out of here. And so does my family. No matter what Priscilla may tell you, this 'operation' isn't about bringing down the Brotherhood; it's about getting us – you, me, my family – out of here... as well as getting Charles out of the Brotherhood. That's why Charles sends me letters. Vampires...the Brotherhood...they're all bad. I just want things to be like before."
"But they can't! You are a vampire, Thomas."
"I know, but at least my family can be together again. And I don't have to be part of the awful things that Priscilla makes us do."
Penny sat on the edge of her bed, brooding. She wasn't really mad at Thomas. She could see the way that he acted that horrible night was not exactly normal vampire behavior. And he was just a random vampire then too. Her family was picked at random. But Charles, she trusted him. She trusted him with her life and her heart.