Almost Lovers (22 page)

"I called for him," I told the Queen who
looked at Tommy as if waiting for an explanation as to his
presence.

The Queen nodded and motioned Tommy to
Prussia still lying on the chaise. He rushed to her side.

"I'm not a doctor," said Tommy, looking
confused.

"Fetch the doctor," the Queen told her
second guard that had been standing outside the room, "And close
that door,"

The guard closed the door and Tommy looked
to me, expectantly.

"I need to know if they bit her or drugged
her or anything like that," I said.

"They?" asked the Queen, "As in, more than
one attacker?"

Tommy looked from me to the Queen as I tried
to finish giving Tommy instructions before I delved into the
details.

"Do a full blood work up," I said, "Blood's
your thing?"

Tommy nodded his head.

"If ever I had a
thing
I suppose
blood would be it," he said, opening the black leather bag he had
brought with him and prepared to draw blood.

"We should talk," I said to the Queen,
trying to maintain a tone of respect but urgency, "in private,"

I looked at Tommy and Tommy looked at me. A
bit more awkward than it should have been but there it had
been.

"Tommy, you're an asset to our family," said
the Queen, "But with knowledge comes liability. We'll be in the
other room. Let me know if you need anything and make sure you
sedate her,"

Tommy nodded and I followed the Queen into
her office next door. As soon as we were in the confines of her
office, with Prussia next door being attended to by Tommy, the
Queen turned to me with her arms crossed.

"Spill it," she said, "Whatever happened,
everything that happened, all of it," She was angry. This meant I
still had a bad poker face.

"Lydia attacked Robert," I blurted out,
kneeling to the ground.

"Stand up," she said, pure annoyance in her
voice, "I knew she would be nothing but trouble. She hasn't even
been in this court for, what, a month?"

"She didn't attack Prussia," I said,
standing up and hopeful that what little I had just tried to help
Lydia wouldn't backfire on me, "Someone else did, someone that had
been with her,"

"Bullshit," said the Queen, her face twisted
in disgust, "You tell her off but you're still blinded by that
girl."

The Queen was pacing now, angry and full of
rage. I tried not to move. But the more she paced the angrier she
got.

"Let me hear the rest of it," she said,
still pacing and fuming, "Don't leave anything out, I don't want to
miss anything by you running through the highlights,"

I recounted everything that I had seen in as
much detail as I could recall. The more I talked the more she
calmed down though she still wore a path into the rug. What had
felt like an hour of recap had been a few moments at best. It felt
like an eternity as I went over every detail, every mistake, and
every hiccup.

"To summarize then," said the Queen, her
finger pointed in the air to make sure I paid attention, "You were
late getting back to Prussia, you don't know where her guards were,
she was in the process of being swept off her feet by Robert which
would jeopardize my interests, your ex-girlfriend and another woman
attacked them in the park and you let them both go? And not only
did you
not
go after this other woman but you left Lydia to
some light clean up and then went on your merry way?"

"I was concerned about Prussia," I said, not
knowing what else to offer up but the truth, "I couldn't leave
Prussia with Lydia and pursue the other woman,"

"You should have KILLED Lydia! You were well
within your right in following my orders!" she screamed at me.

I let my eyes fall to the floor, having
never angered the Queen to the extent that she had raised her
voice, let alone yelled at me. I had never seen her so angry before
in my life.

"My priority was Prussia," I repeated in a
quiet voice.

The Queen stood within inches of my face and
when I looked into her eyes I saw what I hadn't expected to see. I
saw frustration and understanding.

"If Prussia had died I would have had to
stake you," she said, voice shaking with her frustration and anger,
"I wouldn't have wanted to. I would have
had to
," she
emphasized the last part.

"I will keep her safe," I said, "I won't let
her out of my sight,"

I tilted my chin up, trying to steel myself
so that she could see that I meant what I said. But her face had
already fallen. Victoria’s disappointment seemed to be
unwavering.

"
We
will keep her here, under
constant guard," said Victoria, "This is the safest place she could
be,"

The door opened and a bloody Tommy stumbled
in. His night clothes were covered in droplets that had run down
his face and chin to splash everywhere. He could barely stand.

"Prussia," he managed to stammer out, "She's
been taken,"

I looked at the Queen in complete shock and
she returned the same look to me. We both sunk down into a crouch
and waited for an attacker to burst through the door that Tommy had
come through. After a second, we both moved. The Queen moved to her
side table and removed a stake from a display. I rushed to Tommy,
yanking him in to the room and away from the opening of the
door.

"What happened? How many are there?" I
asked, wishing he wasn't such a frail creature for once.

The blood that sputtered from his lips
smelled delicious but all I could think about was Prussia.

"One," he said, his hands grasping onto my
arms as they held him up from the ground where he had fallen, "She
just walked in and took her. There...there wasn't a guard. It was
just me,"

I dashed out of the room and into the next
one, scanning the disarray of the room and failing to find a single
trace of Prussia or of a ransom note. Whoever had done this hadn't
wasted any time. I bolted back into the Queen's office and sat
Tommy up.

"Tell me what happened," I said, "Start from
the beginning. Anything you can remember,"

Tommy dabbed at his head and the Queen
grabbed a blanket to stop the bleeding, stake still in hand.

"She looked like a human but I knew she
wasn't. Vampires have this look in their eyes, like, they've seen
death," said Tommy, his voice shaking, "I had just finished drawing
the last sample and was getting ready to check her for any bite
marks and the door opened. I thought it had been the doctor. She
walked right in and she hit me. She hit me so hard I flew across
the room. I thought she was going to kill me but she didn't. She
just picked up Prussia right off the sofa and walked out,"

"What did she look like?" I asked, listening
intently.

"She...had short hair," said Tommy, "But it
wasn't your normal short hair. It was so short it was like pressed
to her head but it wasn't shaved,"

Tommy shook his head, as though frustrated
at not being able to express himself clearly. And then I understood
what he wanted to describe. Short hair from the 20s.

"Flappers," I said, looking at Tommy and
hopeful that the woman had been the same one from before.

"Yes," he said, "Exactly like one of those
flapper girls from the old movies,"

His face lit up and he smiled for a moment.
He had told me what I needed to know. I knew who took her.

"Do you know who it is?" asked the Queen, a
hand on my shoulder.

"No," I said, realization and anger welling
up in me, "But I have an idea who might. Tommy, let's get you
cleaned up. Prussia is in danger. We don't have much time,"

I bolted from a dead sleep to find someone
biting my neck. Not a love nibble or a creepy nuzzle but a deep
sinking bite that pierced flesh and sent a streak of blood racing
down the front of my blouse.

I tried to strike my attacker but found my
wrists bound over my head. I tried to kick but I only swung, my
feet barely able to touch the floor. I tried as hard as I could to
stand but the tips of my toes grazed the floor in a way that mocked
my attempts. I had been suspended over the ground somehow. I
couldn’t reach the floor save for a toe or two. Looking above at my
hands, I could immediately see why.

I had been hung from a meat hook by my
wrists, bound together. I tried to hit my attacker with my face and
it only resulted in a fiercer bite into my neck. The shooting pain
was so intense that I saw nothing but blinding light for a moment.
When I could see again, I also realized I had been screaming. My
eyes were wide with terror as I watched a woman walk in. We seemed
to be inside a walk-in freezer.

“Help me,” I screamed in terror.

I tried kicking as much as I could but the
man chewing on my neck had a firm bite and now had a big ball of my
hair in his hand. Every time I kicked he yanked my hair.

“Please!” I screamed as the woman stood
there, taking in the scene. Maybe she was in shock.

“Get off of her!” the woman finally yelled
at the man.

He didn’t budge. I kicked out as hard as I
could and he yanked my hair which sent my head reeling back,
causing even more agony not only for my neck but the curve of my
neck where he had latched on to me.

I whimpered at the pain and gave the woman
in the doorway my most pleading look. Had she frozen in fear? Would
she go to get help? I gave another kick, not nearly as strong as
the last one had been and it must not have bothered him as much. He
gave a deep, guttural growl and sank his bite in with new
determination. I screamed from the pain and kept looking to the
woman in the doorway.

“I said get off of her,” the woman said,
this time quiet but threatening.

He didn’t pay her any attention. I felt the
tension in the room rise. I had hope as she took fast and angry
steps toward the man that dug his face around in my neck. She
reached him and I was mortified as she grabbed my attacker by the
arm and ripped him away from me and into the wall of the freezer in
one seamless motion.

She looked deceptively weak for how much
strength she really had. But then he turned his face to both of us.
First he looked at me, ready for another bite and then hesitated,
looking at the woman who had come to my aid. I lost my breath for a
moment. Because looking into his face, blood smeared from cheek to
cheek, I could see that he had bared his teeth and they were long.
They were much longer than a normal person.

“I don’t believe it,” said the woman.

I looked at her then, sure that she had been
just as shocked as I had been. But she had been looking at me.

“She’s never seen fangs,” said the man with
my blood soaking his face.

They both smiled at each other and in that
moment I saw hers too. She had teeth just like the man. And they
laughed.

“This can’t be happening,” I said, my mind
trying to catch up with what my eyes saw.

“Yes, well, it is,” said the woman, smiling
at me, “Brad, get her down and sit her in the chair. I want to find
out what she knows,”

I felt weak. I didn’t know how long I had
been hanging in the freezer on a meat hook. I didn’t feel cold at
all. My attacker, Brad, pulled me off of the meat hook and threw me
over his shoulder like a low quality cut of meat. Then I saw what
had been hanging behind me.

Row after row, there were others hanging
just like me – unconscious. Gaping wounds in the sides of their
necks, in their wrists, anywhere flesh was exposed and some places
where their clothes had been torn away. I screamed in horror and
continued to scream all the way into the dank and dirty room with
the chair in the middle of it.

Brad dropped me into the chair and smiled a terrifying smile.

“If you run I’m pretty sure she’ll let me
have the rest of you,” he whispered with a hint of a hungry growl
in his voice, “I do love the way you taste,”

I became light headed from the smell of my
own blood on his face being so close to mine.

“Take a walk,” said the woman.

“Sure thing,” he said, winking at me and
then strolling out of the door that seemed to lead into some sort
of warehouse.

From the look of the room, it had been or
should be abandoned. The walls had plaster peeling all over the
place. The floor was coated in dirt and trash to the extent that
you would think it really had a dirt floor if not for the drain in
the middle of the sloping floor. It must have been an abandoned
meat packing facility.

I couldn’t see back into the freezer but I
knew I had seen at least 30 or more other people in there. I didn’t
want to think about whether they were dead or alive. Some looked
like they had fresher wounds. Others looked as though they had bled
out a while ago. I tried to see as much as I could but there wasn’t
much to see. I thought I had seen a desk near the far wall away
from the door but the lighting made it hard to see clearly. The
steel door leading out into the warehouse looked heavy though Brad
had slid it easily enough as he left.