8: Challenge Accepted
The crisp night air calms some of my nerves.It definitely cools down my overheated body. But I can’t be sure if the wolves will be out for Avery or the vampire. With a little magic, I summon a cab for them and pray for the best. Tomorrow I’ll have to whip up extra repellant.
“You can take the cab too. It will swing by and drop us off and then you.” Avery pleads, still a little shaken.
“I don’t live that far. I’ll be fine.” As the words come out, I realize that I say them a lot, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t mean it. “I’m sure the filthy dog has moved onto a better, unsuspecting girl. Text me when you get home.” And I cut the conversation off with a slam of the door.
I give them a sheepish wave as the cab drives away. I don’t hang out long in front of the still busy club entrance. The line still goes on for blocks. I head in the opposite direction, glad to leave the drama behind.
Or so I think I leave it all behind. Less than a block from my apartment complex that tingly feeling attacks my back. The sense of eyes on you. I take the long around, which is pretty much just circling the building.
“If I knew a vampire was going to follow me home, I would’ve took the cab.” I say into the night air, my back still to him.
“I didn’t mean scare you.” The vampire allure heavy in tone.
“I never said I was scared. It’s just unpleasant having someone stalk you.”
“I wasn’t-” I cut his words off as I interrupt his speech.
“Stalking you.” I finish his sentence for him. “Says the vampire to its prey.” I whip around to face him, golden eyes.
In the moonlight, the blonde half of hair looks even lighter than in the club and his dark roots make his skin paler. His jeans are snug and the sleeves of too tight t-shirt rolled up to create little cuffs. Now all he needs is a cigarette and you’ll have the stereotypical bad boy.
“I may have followed you, but only to make sure you got home safe.”
“I don’t need a vamp to make sure I get home safe.”
He flat out laughs at me. “That is true. You did quite a number on the last vampire you had an encounter with, didn’t you Hazel?”
The blood in my veins goes cold and my heart skips at least four beats before it starts pumping again. My mind races trying to remember if Avery or Avalos said my name at the club, but I know that’s not how he knows my name. He knows about my run in with the vampire in the cemetery. Shit.
“Are you offering to be next?” I cover up my fear with aggression. Not the best choice, but I would prefer not to show fear.
“No, but I am here for something...” He brings his hand to his chin slowly rubbing the tiny prickly hairs, more like playing with me, “...that you can’t refuse.”
“Sure I can.”
“Phillip,” he pauses knowing that I know exactly who Phillip is, “demands a debt to be paid. You killed one of his and now-”
I cut him off again, the words just rambling out of my mouth. “You’re here to kill me?”
“Enlist you.”
“So you’re going to kill me then turn me into a blood sucking monster?” Not any better.
He closes the gap between the two of us in a blink of an eye. “You can either come willing or I can force you, but you will be coming.” His eyes are even more mesmerizing up close. His hot breath on my neck.
“Is that threat?” My words are all choppy as I stand ramrod straight, afraid that any jerk of my head will brush against his too close mouth.
“It can be.” His voice gets a little sharper, each word pronounced with emphasis.
“I don’t work well with threats. I tend to not listen to directions.”
“Feisty, I like it.” His hand appears right before my eye. His knuckles graze my cheek and then neck as he slides his hands down the length of my face. His fingers follow the bone of my collar before his hand drops off my shoulder. “A challenge.”
I should bite my tongue, no pun intended, but I don’t. I fight all common sense. What the hell is wrong with me? “Challenge accepted.”
As he steps back, a flood of relief washes over me. He dares laugh at me again. “Three days. If you don’t willingly come with me to meet with Phillip then everyone and everything is game.”
Vampires never play fair do they?
“Well, I’m done for today,” I snap my fingers into a play gun, “so I’m going to go home...alone and get a good night's sleep.”
“You do that, because in three days you won’t be sleeping at night.” He flashes me a toothy smile that causes my skin to crawl. His fangs poke into his bottom lip. They look sharp, so sharp.
Just as quickly as he ran up on me, he leaves. I stand dumbfounded in the middle of the sidewalk confused and beaten down by what just happened.
What did just happen? Did I just get myself into some trouble?
Oh god, wait until Monty finds. Wait until Caleb finds out. I groan in regret. It was a chunk out of my neck or a chunk out of him. Any sane person would say a chuck out of the other...person, which in this case happened to be an undead blood sucker.
Sleep doesn’t come easy, but once I do doze off, regrettably my dreams come easy.
*My eyes are blind or it's just pitch black in here. A mania comes over me and my hands fly up to my face, but my knuckles crack against something. As I lay on my back it can’t be a wall, it’s something else. Frantically, I feel around me, quickly assessing the lack of space of the box I lay in.
It gets hard to breathe, my heart pounding my blood races. Buried alive. As my fists bang as hard as they can against the wood tiny pebbles of dirt sprinkle on my face. An ear splitting scream rips from my mouth, careless of the dirt that falls onto my tongue.
And then the flooring of the makeshift coffin disappears and I plunge down deep into the earth. I’m finally free of that wretched box, my limbs have the space they need to stretch, but I can’t control anything as I free fall into an abyss.
It’s never ending, this sinister rabbit hole. But the deeper I go, the darker it gets. The darker it gets, things start to come out. Hands, boney rotten fleshed arms with hands begin to grab at me. My ankles, my wrists, my hair, my funeral dress. And just when I think it’ll never stop, I slam into the ground.*
The impact jolting me awake. A deep breath sucks in through my tightly pursed lips. I can’t be sure if I screamed in my sleep or not, but it seemed real, so real.
Monty’s death card playing out in a sick and twisted way, mocking me.