Elizabeth and the Vampire's Cabin (6 page)

They
sailed for some hours. Elizabeth admired the islands that they passed, watched
birds fly overhead, and listened to the ocean. She enjoyed communing with
nature, but she was beginning to feel troubled. Sunset was fast approaching.
They had been sailing for far longer than she had been told to expect by Mark
himself. By now, the island, with its quaint little cabin, should have been in
sight. But all she could see were open waters.

"Mark!
It's going to be dark soon and I see no island."

"I
told you we should have started sooner."

"We
could have left exactly when you said and it still would have been too late.
You didn't plan this well if your goal was to be back home before dark."

"Cross
your fingers..." he trailed off.

"What?"
Elizabeth called back.

"Cross
your fingers this is all going to work out fine."

This
kind of talk was unusually superstitious and juvenile for a hardened wilderness
guide. Elizabeth was mildly annoyed by this. She didn't give a crap about
adhering to Mark's superstitions. Her will was the only thing that mattered on
this trip, and her will was to be carried out before dinner time.

Suddenly,
Elizabeth saw another boat off in the distance. It was coming towards them at a
remarkable pace and had a couple of people inside. It looked old, like
something she might see in a black and white film. It was a small, wooden, red
motorboat, with a white interior, and was shaped like a fish. Elizabeth stared
hard for a moment, unsure of something large she saw on the boat. It was a
grandfather clock engine.
 
There was no
mistaking the tall, vertical engine with the enclosed crankcase and cylinder
and valve resting on top. It looked exactly as the name implied it should: like
the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Elizabeth didn't know what to make of this
old boat with the antique engine out in the middle of nowhere. Is this person
from the year 1900? she wondered. She also wondered at its speed and where it
could have come from. It was the fastest motorboat she had ever seen. She
realized she couldn't hear the engine. Weren't grandfather clock engines
noisy?
 
But her marvel at the antique
quality of the little boat, its silence, and its speed was short lived. Before
she knew it, that little boat had pulled up alongside their boat.

"Looks
like we have company, Mark" Elizabeth called out.

But
then she noticed something even odder than a random speed boat suddenly pulling
up alongside the catamaran. Arthur was sleeping against the grandfather clock
engine. Arthur? She was bewildered. What could he be doing here? Did Austin send
him? But she was quickly distracted by someone else. Another man, dark and
apparently strong, sat on a seat. He wore sunglasses, a black coat, and black
jeans. Elizabeth stared at this man. He was intense. She could feel his
presence, and that presence felt eerily familiar. And then he removed the
sunglasses. Shock filled her when he locked eyes with her. It was Aaron. The
deep set eyes, shadowed by the monstrous, overhanging brow ridges, pierced her.
She felt mesmerized by him. But his hold over her was abruptly broken when he
put the sunglasses back on, jumped from the motorboat, and grabbed the side of
the railing of the catamaran. Elizabeth stared in shock at him. That leap had
been inhuman. Aaron suddenly drew a gun and shot at her. Elizabeth felt a stabbing
pain in her shoulder. It was a dart. Almost immediately she began to feel
dizzy. The intruder lunged towards her. She pulled up her right pant leg and
reached for a throwing knife. She grasped one and threw it at him, but it only
bounced off of him, harmlessly landing on the deck. She sank to the ground.
Unfazed, the intruder lifted her clear off the deck. Elizabeth felt like she
was suffocating in his grip. She tried to fight back, but her struggles were
useless. He only clutched her harder and pressed her head against his chest.
Angrily, she attempted to bite him through his thick coat. It did no good. She
couldn't breach the fabric. She was caught in a vise with no escape.

"Stop
struggling!" He bellowed at her.

Breathlessly,
she finally relented. He seemed to sense that he had won this round, because he
maliciously chuckled and loosened his grip. His cruel chuckle was the last
thing she remembered before she lost consciousness.

Chapter
8: The Vampire's Cabin

Later,
though she had no idea how much later, Elizabeth woke up on a nice, firm,
chaise lounge. Her head rested gently on a pillow. She could tell it was now
night, but a lamp near the lounge was on, allowing her to see her surroundings.
She was in a wooden cabin much like the one she had intended to stay in. Before
she could take in much more than the basics of her surroundings she caught a
presence out of the corner of her eye. Her head whirled to a recliner in the
far left corner of the room.
 
Her captor
was sitting in it nonchalantly. A magazine rested in his lap. He smiled at her
devilishly. She instinctively closed her eyes for a moment, wishing him away,
hoping he was a nightmare. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see
that her wish had come true. He was gone. Bewildered, her eyes widened and her
jaw dropped. That was impossible. He had been sitting right there. She turned
her head to her right and almost died of shock. He was standing next to the
right side of the lounge. Quickly, he slid onto the lounge and on top of her.
 
He grabbed her shoulders. Elizabeth's face
flushed, and she suddenly felt very weak. Her brain was scrambled. Up was down
and 2+2 equaled 3. She was Alice gone down the rabbit hole and trapped in a
nightmarish Wonderland from Hell.

“Who
are you,” she began. “What are you?” she asked more certainly. That was what
she really wanted to know. What was this impossible creature in front of her?

Aaron
looked down on her with fierce black eyes. As Elizabeth passed her eyes over
him, she suddenly realized that he was also sizing her up. She locked eyes with
him, realizing the best way to get his focus off of her slender, pretty
physique, was by having him focus on her eyes.

“I
am Aaron Ayro,” he responded. “But you already knew that. What you really want
to know is what I am. I am a vampire.” His eyes drifted over her body and
Elizabeth had the impression that he was undressing her with his eyes.
 
She gulped.

“I
don’t believe you are a vampire,” she said obstinately.

He
smiled devilishly and bared his fangs.

“I’m
still not convinced,” she persisted. “Stop toying with me.”

And
then Aaron transformed into a bat right before her eyes. She nearly fainted on
the lounge. Before she could cry out, he had transformed back into his human
form. Elizabeth stumbled off the lounge and fell to the floor. He grabbed her
from underneath her arms and lifted her up. He threw her up in the air, caught
her, and wrapped his arms around her, looking at her ravenously. He bared his
fangs and she was certain that she would die in his embrace. She reached into
her pocket and withdrew the going away present from Arthur: the silver cross.
She pressed it against Aaron’s neck. Nothing happened. He released a cruel
laugh from his lips.

“That
only works if you believe in it,” he said.

He
grabbed her hand and lowered it. She dropped the cross in despair. Tightly, he
gripped her and then kissed her on the mouth. His mouth was hot. A fire
travelled up through her body as nerve endings were scorched by his kiss. When
he stopped kissing her she felt drunk. She licked her sore mouth and tasted
blood. He had bitten her lower lip. She swooned and thought for a moment that
she might pass out. As if sensing she was about to go down, he picked her up
and carried her into another room. He laid her down onto a giant king size bed.
He stroked her cheek with a hand. She realized a tear had been there.

“I’ll
be back in a moment. Don’t keep me waiting too long!”

Elizabeth
watched him walk out the door. And then she burst into tears. She sobbed
hysterically. And then she caught sight of the window. She ran to it and
quickly opened it. She jumped out and into the night. She had no idea where she
would go, but she knew it would be far away from this monster. However, before
she could take even more than a few steps from the window, a figure jumped from
the roof and dropped directly in front of her. The creature whirled around with
giant fangs, far larger than Aaron's tiny ones had been. This thing was a saber
tooth tiger in comparison. He actually hissed at her and Elizabeth saw that the
whites of the man’s eyes were blood red. She let out a blood curdling scream.
Suddenly, Aaron appeared miraculously at her side and struck the saber tooth
vampire. It went flying back. Aaron scooped her up and put her back through the
window. He followed suit a moment after.

"That
was Joe Newman. Sometimes he hunts a little too close to the house. But he
knows you're for me. Trust me," he said with that chilling smile that made
her blood curdle. "It's better me than him."

He
moved towards her so fast that she did not even perceive it. She resigned
herself to the fact that this was the end. Her fate was to die at the hands of
a vampire. But instead of biting her again, his hands moved to her jacket. He
ripped it off of her. She stared in shock. He wanted to kill her without her
jacket on. And then she saw what he was staring at: her chest. Her hands
immediately flew up to her chest area. Unfortunately, as soon as she did this his
hands moved to her belt. She tried to push him back, but he grabbed her wrists.
She yelled as loudly as she ever had, "Asshole!"

He
looked at her with that sadistic look again. Cruel passion fueled his eyes and
thin smile.

"What
do you want," Elizabeth screamed. Tears streamed down her face.

"You
know what I want," he replied calmly.

Chapter
9: The Next Day

Elizabeth
woke up the next morning feeling, to say the least, unrefreshed. She was
exhausted from the night before. She had fought to the point of near collapse.
And when she had run out of physical steam, she had pleaded and begged him to
let her be. She had cried hysterically, insisting that he couldn't do what he
was threatening to do to her. To add insult to injury, he laughed in her face.
She was starting to feel dangerously annoyed by his sadistic smiles and laughs.
That feeling nearly outweighed her fear of him. But she continued to appeal to
him for mercy, hoping for a miracle. He mocked those appeals. In the end, she
had lost her struggle against him. She was drained of energy, and his was
endless. She could only hold him back for so long.

The
memory of the night before overwhelmed her, and she began to cry. She buried
her head in her pillows and grabbed the covers from behind her. She hid
underneath the blankets until her tears abated. She lifted her head from the
pillows and withdrew the covers.
 
She
then looked to her right. The indentation of his head was still on the pillow.
A tear made its way down her cheek. Then another, and another, and
another...Before she knew it, her head was buried in the pillows and her body
underneath the covers once again.

She
fell asleep and woke up much later.
 
She
looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was old fashioned, made of tin, and
had the archaic two bell alarm system atop it. It looked like something out of
a Mickey Mouse cartoon from the '30s. It said 2:00 pm on it. Elizabeth groaned
at the late hour and knew she had to get up and take care of herself. She had
to eat something.

She
made her way out the door of the bedroom and found herself in the living room.
Her eyes fell on Arthur, who was sitting at the table and drinking a cup of
coffee. She almost burst into tears again. She wasn't sure if it was relief
that someone she recognized was here or horror that he had taken part in her
abduction.

"Elizabeth!"
Arthur burst out. He ran to her and tried to hug her, but she gently pushed him
away.

"What's
happening?" she asked. "Why were you on the boat when he abducted
me?"

"It
wasn't what I wanted. He kidnapped me right after the party. I was told that if
I didn't help him abduct you he would kill me."

"But
why you?"

"I
have no clue. Punishment for crashing his party? I think it's probably more
than that. Or maybe it's not. I think this guy is almost completely unhinged.
He made me his personal "assistant". I still feel awful. I had to
drink about a pint of his blood after I left your house."

"What?!"

"It
was a nightmare. He car jacked me. After I left your house I went to my car and
I hit the unlock button. I don't know where he came from, but he was suddenly
behind me and it felt like he had a gun to my back. He told me to unlock the
trunk and then he ordered me into it. Honestly, I have no clue how no one
called 911. There were plenty of people around trying to leave your party. I
tried to reassure myself that someone would see this and intervene, or a squad
car would be here any minute. But it didn't happen. Maybe it was too dark out
in the street for people to notice. Maybe people just don't pay attention
anymore. I have no idea. But I was in the trunk, scared to death, for the next several
minutes. He drove us to his house, grabbed me out of the trunk, and manhandled
me all the way into his place. That bouncer was still there. I'll never forget
it. The guy just stared straight ahead like nothing was happening. When I got
inside the house we were alone. His party was obviously over. I don't know if
it ended naturally or it ended because you pulled a knife on someone. But he
took me to the kitchen, grabbed a carafe, and poured what looked to be about
sixteen ounces of a red liquid into a glass. He forced me to drink it, and I
realized it was blood. I tried to stop drinking, but when I paused he told me
it was punishment for crashing his party. Then he threatened to kill me if I
didn't down the whole thing. Within moments of finishing, I got an awful
stomach ache. I thought I had appendicitis and my whole stomach was about to
explode. And then, once the pain was almost unbearable, it began to recede. I
had transformed into a half vampire. I guess that's like vampire lite. I don't
know how to explain it well. Imagine Aaron has the strength of a god and I have
the strength of a demi-god. He claims that he has extended my lifespan by about
one and a half times as much, and I can now transform into an animal. I'm also
abnormally strong and really crave fresh, raw meat all the time." Arthur's
explanation of what happened was a whirlwind, and he was breathless by the end
of it.