BITTEN (Book #3 of the Vampire Legends) (5 page)

“She’s got to be here somewhere!” John said and he started screaming her name, “RACHEL, RACHEL, are you here?”

He waited in silence, but there was no answer. The only thing that he heard was the echo of his voice coming back at him.

“RACHEL, it’s your father, please, if you can hear me, let me know you are there!”

Still, no answer. He began to feel hopeless as he continued walking around the back of the castle, which backed up to a large lake. He saw teams of divers, in the water bringing up bodies and other clues from the scene. It was a sight he couldn’t bear to see anymore. He had to get out of there, and he wanted to shield his wife and other daughter from these images, too.

“I think we’ve seen enough here,” John said to the police.

“We aren’t finished yet. Do you still want to see the rest of the grounds?”

“I don’t think this is appropriate. My daughter is here,” John said back.

“Dad, I’m a grown up, I’m fine. We need to keep going. This isn’t a joke,” Sarah said, her eyes wide.

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking but he knew this was the first time he had ever been to an active crime scene before and definitely the first time he had even seen a dead body.

“No, Sarah. We are leaving now!” John said firmly as he turned his family around and started headed towards the car. “This is not a place for us at this time. You should never have come with us in the first place. If I had known what was happening here, I wouldn’t have come either.”

“But Dad, don’t you understand. We have her necklace. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Sarah said, as she took the necklace from her mother.

“Yes, it does. It means she was here, but now she isn’t,” he replied.

“Is that all it means to you?” Sarah asked back, as if he were an idiot.

“Um, I mean, yes,” he answered, beginning to feel dumb. “What else does it mean?”

“See this key?” Sarah said, pointing to the key on the necklace. “This is the key to her diary. The diary she writes in every day. This necklace holds the information to everything we may be searching for. We may have all of our answers.”

He looked at his daughter and smiled. He suddenly felt so lucky to have raised such a smart child. “You’re absolutely right,” he replied.

“Thank God!” Betsy said.

“We have to get home to find that Diary,” Sarah said as she put the key into her pocket.

“Let’s go!” John said as he whisked his family back into the car, as he headed back towards the house.

Chapter Six

“Help! Someone help me!” Hunter screamed as he tried to avoid the light that seeped into the small window of his jail cell.

“Quiet in there!” the guard yelled as he came stomping down the long stone corridor, his combat boots echoing loudly with each step.

Hunter dodged each ray of light as it approached his body. He was all out of Hex Lotion and didn’t have any protection against the sun. He had been in the Greslin prison for a few days now, managing to survive off of nothing but bread, water and a few blood capsules that they gave him.

His cell was damp and humid and smelled to him of rotting fish. It was a circular room made of old stone and mortar. It almost felt to him like he was in the top of a castle, perhaps his cell was in a rampart, he wasn’t quite sure. The night he was thrown in this jail was all a blur to him now. It all happened so quickly, and he was injured. He’d been lashed pretty badly and he was bleeding all over his face, covering his eyes, so he couldn’t see where he was going.

He wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but he knew it must have been in the south somewhere, because the humidity was raging for an October day. He’d never seen anything like it up north at his boarding school. At times he could hear voices coming from outside of his cell window. They were the voices of southerners, with accents. He heard the word, “Ya’ll, Recon, Yonder,” words he hadn’t heard in ages since he’d been up north. He liked it down there, he really did. It reminded him of his time down in Mississippi, when he spent his summer’s studying at the National Vampire School. He’d longed for those days, but since his graduation, hadn’t been back as often as he’d liked.

Another ray of light hit his circular cell, leaving him hardly any room to stand without his skin getting singed off. He sucked in his stomach, and put his back against the warm stonewall.

“Ahhhh!” Hunter screamed as a ray of light hit his bare foot and he saw a brief singing before he pulled his foot quickly out of the light and started blowing on it. “That was a close call,” he said under his breath as he wiggled his toes that had survived the brief and sudden bolt of light.

“You in there, if you keep up this hollerin’ we’re going to throw you outside,” the guard said sternly as he stood there with his arms folded against his large chest. “You must abide by the prisoner laws!” He said, firmly. “Law number one,” he yelled loudly. “You may only speak when you are spoken to!” he said as he glared into the cell at Hunter and then slowly turned his body around and walked back down the long hallway, clomping his feet as he went.

Part of Hunter felt scared and nervous, but another part of him felt that he would make it out alive. He felt that he knew too much information for them to kill him, so he figured he’d put up a fight, and they wouldn’t do anything to him. At least not yet.

All of a sudden, he heard a loud creak as the big iron gate opened at the end of the hallway. In walked four security guards in black suits, with the Greslin crest embroidered on their left breast pockets. Hunter watched as they walked down the long hallway with their dark sunglasses on, heading straight towards him. He hoped they weren’t coming for him, but this time, figured they were. There was no escaping this troupe. He looked up as the four men approached his cell. He waited for them to speak, and knew this wasn’t the time to disobey law number one.

“Are you Hunter?” a large guard said, looking his square in the eye.

“Yes, that’s me,” he said, and suddenly a pang of panic hit him. He suddenly realized the power of the Greslins and what could happen if he misstepped.

“You’re coming with us,” the guard said back as he took out a large ring of keys and started fumbling around, trying to find the right key to fit into the large padlock on the outside of his door.

After five minutes of trying out different keys, his door opened with a bang and in marched the four men. They immediately cuffed his hands behind his back and grabbed his arms, squeezing firmly so he didn’t try to run. They put a blindfold over his eyes and the guards dragged him down the long corridor and out through the big iron gate at the end, which slammed shut behind them.

Hunter could feel them winding around and going up and down steps. At one point Hunter tripped, but the guards caught him before he hit the ground. As they passed other guards, they kept saying, “Prisoner 11201 reporting to the head leader.”

Hunter got a chill down his spine. He didn’t know who he was going to see, but he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. He continued walking through what he thought must have been more iron gates as he heard them creak open and slam shut as he walked through. Then a loud buzzing sound rang through his ears and the sound of a vault door opened.

The guard ripped off his blind fold, and there, before his eyes, sat Violet, looking meaner than ever as she hoisted herself up into a throne like chair in the front of a large room, filled with stained glass and pews. It looked to him like they were in an old ancient church, but he knew they were in the jury room of this castle.

Hunter stood in front of her throne silently, waiting to be addressed, as Violet looked him up and down and began to take notes on a piece of paper. He couldn’t imagine what she was writing, but stood there quietly.

“You did it to me for the last time!” Violet screeched, opening up the conversation.

“Did what?” Hunter asked, confused.

“You know what you did. Don’t play dumb with me.”

Hunter paused, and thought for a moment, “I’m sorry Violet, please tell me.”

“At school—you led me on for the last time,” she said.

Hunter realized she was probably right, but didn’t want to admit this to her, not here, not now.

“That’s not entirely true, Violet. We had fun, we had some good laughs.”

“Good fun? Good laughs?” she repeated. “Is that what you thought I was after?”

Hunter knew he was doomed to be imprisoned forever. There was no way out of this.

“Listen, Violet. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Hunter said.

“And all this time you loved her?” Violet retorted, louder than before.

“Her who?” Hunter asked. Now he was really confused.

“Oh, don’t go playing dumb with me, kid. You know exactly who I am talking about.”

Standing there thinking, racking his brain he couldn’t think of one person.

“I really don’t know who you’re talking about. Could you just tell me? I swear. I don’t know.”

“The girl from Westchester. What’s her name again?”

Hunter immediately thought about Rachel. He couldn’t believe that she thought he loved Rachel. This must have been a major miscommunication.

“Violet, it’s not me that loves her. It’s my brother. My twin brother, Benji.”

“Don’t try to pin it on someone else, Hunter. I know your ways. I know your tricks,” Violet sneered.

“I’m not, you have to trust me on this one. I have no feelings for her. NONE. She’s with my brother, not me. And besides, I think you might have misheard one of our conversations, since that is where you got this information to begin with. Maybe you got it confused?”

“DON’T QUESTION ME!” Violet screamed.

Hunter shuddered as her voice echoed loudly in the room. He stood there, feeling introverted and shy all of a sudden. He didn’t want to speak. He felt scared.

He waited for a few minutes until Violet could catch her breath and compose herself up on the throne. Looking around, he saw the guards standing there watching, looking as stern and serious as ever he’d seen them.

After she took a sip of water, she said, “Hunter, I really don’t think this is going to work out between us.”

Hunter couldn’t believe his ears. Had she gone mad? Was she delusional?

“You might be right,” he replied, pretending to look sad about it.

“I can’t trust you, I really can’t. One moment I feel like I know you and that we are close and the next, you are a total stranger from another coven. And speaking of coven…” she paused and looked at Hunter. “Where is the rest of your Vladdicus kind?”

This was the question that Hunter feared. He didn’t want to tell her where they were all hiding. If he told them, they would surely die. Especially with no warning of the Greslin’s coming, they had no shot of protecting themselves against these evil vampires.

“Um, you know, I really don’t know what happened at the end of the night,” Hunter said quietly.

“SPEAK UP!” Violet shouted.

“I’m not sure,” Hunter said again.

“What do you mean you’re not sure? Of course you know where your coven base is?”

Hunter paused and thought to himself about this situation he’d gotten himself into. She was right—what vampire doesn’t know where the rest of his coven lies.

“Listen Violet, I don’t know and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you,” he said boldly.

A loud noise crept up behind him. He turned to see who it was, and he saw the guards marching towards him with their swords out, ready to execute.

“Do the right thing, Hunter. Tell me where they are,” Violet said back in a creepy tone.

“I am doing the right thing. I just don’t know,” he said, now changing his tune to playing dumb.

“GUARDS, TAKE HIM AWAY!” Violet beckoned to the guards.

At that moment, the gates opened and the voice of a girl came pouring in. “No, please don’t hurt me. Please!” she shouted.

Into view came a girl with blonde hair, dressed in an orange prison robe, being dragged into the jury room by four other large security guards. Hunter couldn’t get a close look at her face, but somehow knew he recognized her voice.

“Wait!” Hunter said, trying to buy time, waiting to see who this mysterious, beautiful girl was.

The guards stopped dragging him out as Violet said, “HALT!”

“Did you suddenly remember where your coven is?” Violet asked.

Hunter waited, as the girl was brought into the room and placed right next to him. They took off her blindfold and had her stand there, alone, waiting to be sentenced.

“Penelope?” he asked. “Is that you?”

The girl turned her head and looked at Hunter, then smiled and began to walk towards him.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Violet said. “How do you two know each other?”

Hunter tried to hide the passion he felt for her. He didn’t want to reveal the two had been lovers many centuries ago when they studied abroad in London. He couldn’t let her find out—if she did, she’d surely kill both of them, he thought to himself. But, he hadn’t seen her in hundreds of years. He’d though she died in one of the great wars that had passed.

“I thought you died?” Hunter said, looking longingly at Penelope.

 “It was a close call, but I survived!” Penelope said, smiling. “And I tried to find you, but…”

“I searched everywhere for you, Pen, I really did,” Hunter said.

Violet cleared her throat.

 “I’ve heard just about enough of this love story,” Violet said. “Hunter, it seems like you just can’t keep your hands off of anyone these days.”

Hunter stood there. Not responding.

“And YOU,” she said, pointing to Penelope. “Seems like you may know a thing or two about Hunter here?”

“Well,” Penelope said, cowardly. “I haven’t seen him, as you know, in many many years.”

Hunter tried to figure out what she meant by that. Then she spoke again.

“You’ve kept me here since the last great war. I haven’t seen or heard from Hunter. You know that,” Penelope said, now getting angry.

“GUARDS, execute her! She’s worthless to us now,” Violet screeched.

“NO! WAIT!” Hunter retorted. “Don’t kill her, take me!”

“Tell me where Benji is?” Violet said, bargaining with him. “If you tell me where he is, we will set her free.”