Almost Lovers (23 page)

“You’re going to hyperventilate,” said the
woman.

She had moved toward where I thought the
desk might be. She wasn’t wrong. In my flurry of observation my
breathing had picked up rapidly. Mostly, I couldn’t wrap my mind
around what I had just seen and where I was. A moment later I
smelled something familiar, tobacco.

The woman came around the chair and into
full view. I still felt a little light headed. I looked down at my
blouse and could see that blood had seeped into it, spreading as
blood does in fine silk – like an unchecked fire.

“He is an over zealous eater,” she said, “I
forgot to tell everyone that you weren’t on the menu…yet,”

I could feel my heart thumping as I realized
that there was a chance I would be back on the menu. Considering
the freezer, I had no way of telling how long I would be on that
menu. Especially with Brad roaming around outside waiting for a
chance to finish me off.

“You’re… You’re,” I choked on the words;
they wouldn’t even pass my lips.

“Hungry?” she offered to finish my sentence,
“No, not at the moment, thank you,”

I watched her tap a small amount of ash off
the end of her cigarette onto the dirt covered floor. As the smoke
from her cigarette created a light haze, I realized the room lacked
both windows and light. She had a curious look, whatever she was.
Her short hair had been cut very close with waves throughout. That
vintage look somehow looked updated and modern for her. Even I
would have noticed her in a crowd. Perhaps if I had I wouldn’t be
on any menu.

“You’re a vampire?” I blurted out.

The woman took a long, thoughtful drag on
her cigarette and let the smoke slowly creep from her lips, her
eyes slanting.

“Are you fucking with me?” she asked, “Are
you seriously fucking with me right now?”

In a flash she was directly in front of me
and her hand came across my face in a hard slap. Then she returned
to the spot she had been at before, the only proof that she had
moved being the sting on my cheek and the small cloud of smoke
floating near my face.

I couldn’t scream. I had been so shocked by
the sudden movement and the forcefulness of her slap. My face felt
as though an entire swarm of bees had just stung the side of my
face. My hand instinctively went up to my face to gently caress the
spot that she had hit me. My mouth open, in shock, and unable to
find any words to express my surprise and my fear at what
apparently stood before me, calm but pretty pissed off it
seemed.

“If you want to play games we can play my
favorite game,” said the woman, her eyes still calculating slits
that never left me, “and it involves Brad, a few others, and
bleeding you out as slow as possible for as long as possible,”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, my
voice a tremble.

“That,” she said, with a pause, “Is a much
better question.”

She smiled then. I felt the tension in my
body release slightly as this time when she smiled I didn’t see any
fangs. It troubled me. Because she looked like any other woman I
might see at the grocery, the mall or in the hallway of my
building. She looked normal.

“I want to know what you do for the Queen,”
said the woman, “What makes you so important? What makes you her
favorite?”

“The Queen?” I asked.

Fear struck me as the woman, her short hair
cut accentuating her slightest facial expression which now
reflected anger, took a single quick step toward me. And then she
paused. Her face turned from anger to a look of thoughtful
contemplation and I held my breath, heart pounding in my chest as a
rabbit fearful of a fox.

“You might know her as Victoria,” said the
woman slowly, “And if you do, I want to know how exactly you know
her,”

I exhaled, thankful that she had shown some
sort of restraint however minor, and my mind began swimming.
Victoria, a Queen? What kind of crap was this? I had been kidnapped
because some old woman wanted me to chit chat about old days, file
her paperwork and date her grandson? However much she had been
paying me it wasn’t enough, not to be kidnapped and chewed on.

“Victoria?” I asked, surprised and shocked,
“Are you saying Victoria is some sort of Queen? That’s what you’re
saying? Queen of what?”

“Queen of all vampires, of course,” murmured
the woman.

She still had a thoughtful expression on her
face. The hand she held her cigarette with also lent a thumb and
ring finger to gently pinching her chin in thoughtful strokes. I
tried to take in what this crazy woman, monster, whatever she was,
had said. This had all been a giant misunderstanding. I didn’t
belong in the middle of whatever kind of mess this was. And no
salary, no car, was worth becoming a meal.

“I swear,” I said, trying to convince this
woman that was clearly insane, “I have no idea. I don’t want
anything to do with this. I’m not involved in anything. Really, I
have only been working for her for a little while. She came by my
work a ton and she wanted me to date her grandson and …”

And then I had a moment, a thought, as
puzzle pieces slid into place. She wanted me to date her grandson
and I didn’t. And a little while later he saves me from some random
hooligan in the park he doesn’t live anywhere near in the middle of
the night. I had been set up from the beginning.

“There it is,” said the woman, coming
closer, excited, “What is it? What did you realize?”

“I think Sebastian staged saving me in the
park,” I murmured, “He lied to me this whole time…”

She took a drag on her cigarette and looked
at me, disappointment on her face as realization of my own sank
in.

“No shit,” she said, dropping her cigarette
onto the floor and crushing it as the smoke crept from between her
lips, “But I don’t care about the boy toy. I want to know what your
business is with the Queen, with Victoria,”

“I file papers,” I said, numb as the full
picture of the past few weeks events became clear to me, “I used to
be normal. I used to work at a grocery store. I miss normal,”

I looked at the blood that had now soaked
down to almost where my belly button would be under my blouse. It
looked good on me, red. I should have gotten the blouse in red
instead of the lighter color.

“You drive a Maserati,” said the woman, “You
walk around in the Queen’s perfume, and you’re telling me you’re
not even her secretary? You just do some light filing?”

“The perfume was a gift,” I mumbled.

Up had become down and down had become up.
If Sebastian really had lied to me, if the entire thing had been
staged, then maybe he had been the reason Robert and I had been
attacked in the park. Maybe he had gotten the same guy to attack
Robert. A tear raced down my cheek at the thought of Robert in the
park, laying so still. I wanted to wail for hours. I wanted to rage
against the person that had done this to us, to Robert, to me.

“The Queen really doesn’t have a use for
you, does she?” the woman asked me, “You’re just a well-pampered
pet for her grandson,”

The thought of being a pet for Sebastian
made me furious. The insinuation, the audacity, and the possibility
that this crazed woman could see after a few moments what I had
been blind to. I had been so very blind.

“I don’t know anything!” I screamed at
her.

If I could spit fire at her I would have. I
didn’t want to be Sebastian’s anything, let alone a pet. And
Victoria could keep him. I had been right to tell her I didn’t want
anything to do with her grand son. If only I had known that
monsters had been circling me, closing in on me, taking all the
goodness out of my life, I could have gotten away.

‘You’ve been surrounded by vampires for
months and you know nothing?” the woman said with an accusatory
tone.

“Vampires? Who the hell would ever even
think they were working for vampires?” I yelled, “Are there
werewolves? What next? Are you part troll too? I’ll tell you what’s
really going on. This is some sort of crazy bad dream, a fucked up
nightmare that I can’t wake up from.”

The woman’s face became calm but tight, the
way a house looks before a hurricane with boards and nails. I
didn’t realize it at first but I held my breath. I forgot where I
was. I was in the lair of monsters and I had the blood soaked
blouse to prove it.

“While it may be your worst nightmare,
you’re not dreaming. If you were dreaming, could you feel this?”
asked the woman.

She was behind me in the blink of an eye and
I felt the adrenaline rush through me as I knew what was coming. I
now knew what it felt to be the rabbit. Soon I would know what it
felt like to be somebody’s dinner.

I felt the tearing and the ripping as my
flesh was torn and shredded. She ripped into the curve of my neck
and shoulder that Brad had bitten on first, gnawing with vigor. I
could feel the blood spray the side of my face and a trickle began
down my blouse.

I screamed as loud as I could. It didn’t
sound like me. I had a moment where I thought there might be
someone else here, someone else being eaten until I screamed a
second time. But there wasn’t anyone else. I screamed with my
entire body from deep in my gut. That scream had come from me. No
one would come. Only more monsters.

I tried to scream again but settled on tears
and sobs of despair. I felt dizzy, sick, tired. My eyes wanted to
close, to go to sleep. I wanted to wake up and for this to all have
been a bad dream. Somehow, as my heart pounded in my chest and my
head pounded in pain I knew that if I went to sleep I wouldn’t wake
up. I tried to scream again but all I got out was a cry of pain.
The jolt of this insane woman, this monster, digging down deeper
into my shoulder and hitting nerve after nerve.

Brad opened the heavy steel door and
strolled in. He looked mildly interested, even turned on. My vision
had become doubled, almost tripled, but I could read his face
enough to be thankful that his perverse emotions were for the leech
latched on to my neck.

“Are you finishing her off?” he asked.

Brad smiled at her, his face already
spattered and smeared with thick but drying blood. His hair slick
and greasy, he laid on the charm for her. If I had the energy I
would have spit at him.

“She doesn’t know anything,” said the woman,
licking blood off of her hands, “She may just be a pet but she’s
still in the way. We can’t have her popping up anywhere alive,”

“Want me to hang her in the ice box?” asked
Brad, taking a few steps toward me.

“No, finish her off,” said the woman, eying
me with moderate disgust as she stepped around me and Brad.

The woman smiled at me as she stepped out of
the room, closing the heavy door behind her. I could only imagine
the smile had been the result of my fate, which she knew more of
than I did. By her smile, I didn’t hold my breath that it would be
a pretty fate. The resounding thud the door made when it slid
closed made my heart drop into the pit of my stomach.

Brad, with the greasy hair, knelt next to me
and smiled. I could barely focus on him at all but what I could
focus on were his teeth. Compared to the blood already around his
mouth, they were a brilliant white to the background of deep red
smears all over his face. He picked my hand up though I couldn’t
feel it. I knew that he had my hand because I could see that he had
it. I watched but I stopped feeling. I couldn’t keep my head up as
it bobbled to the side weakly as I tried to protest. He bit into my
wrist and I could hear a strange ripping sound as his teeth tore
into my flesh and his mouth created a seal, sucking my life force
into his mouth eagerly.

A second goon, one I hadn’t noticed before,
stepped out of the shadows and walked behind me. At first I only
felt his hand on my head. When he tilted my head to the other side
I knew what his intentions were. He wanted the side of my neck that
hadn’t already been ripped apart. I imagined him a neat vampire. It
didn’t matter. I looked at the floor and could see the concrete
floor slanting down to the drain in the room.

My eyes fell to the floor as I couldn’t move
my head. I could feel him biting in, my head bobbing slightly and
the pain fading to almost a dull pressure, a pinching sensation.
The light was fading in and out but I focused all my attention on
what I could see, the drain. My eyes were fading along with my
consciousness and my will to keep fighting. I kept my eyes on the
drain and only the smallest flame of worry burst to life as my eyes
followed a small trail of blood less than a foot away from the
drain. It snaked, without any hurry, toward the drain.

I had no doubt whose blood made its way to
the drain. It may have felt like hours but it could have been as
little as ten or as much as twenty minutes that they fed on me. I
began to wonder if they were drinking my blood at all or just
chewing their way through me they were taking so long. I thought it
would be quick. It seemed impossible and cruel that they would drag
it out, killing me.

I watched as my own blood circled the drain
slowly. When the drain finally ran red and began slipping down the
filthy pipes, I knew that I couldn’t have much longer. Having
survived as long as I had felt inhumane though every second meant
another second alive. Would anyone be looking for me? The one
person that had cared at all for me, as long as I had been in this
crowded and desolate city, had been murdered in front of me. By the
same kind of monsters that had their fangs, literally, sunk into me
now.