Almost Lovers (25 page)

“This is illegal,” I said, my words were
barely a whisper and I didn’t realize until they had fallen that
hot tears were streaming down my face, “It’s illegal and you know
it,” I screamed for the entire room to hear, my rage rushing
through me.

I knew he would find Prussia dead and that
Penelope would be long gone. For him to disgrace me in front of the
court in this way, for him to shame me over a human was not right.
Anyone would see the wrong in this. And it hurt me that he had done
it. It hurt me as deeply as a spear through the chest.

I knew where my loyalties still needed to
rest and my priorities were clear. The moment Sebastian left for
the warehouse I needed to send Penelope a text and warn her to get
out, to get out fast. She wasn’t safe with the Queen’s guards on
their way knowing exactly where she was.

“Long live the Queen,” said Sebastian,
taking a step back.

My rage dissipated into confusion quickly as
I felt a dull pinch at the back of my neck and the guards let my
arms go. Sebastian raised his head with pride. If I didn’t know any
better I would have thought the Queen stood behind me. As a
precaution I decided I should echo the same sentiments he expressed
less I be accused of not expressing appropriate love for the
Queen.

“Long….live…the…” my voice trailed off as I
sent a hand to investigate the pinch that had been at the back of
my neck. I didn’t feel anything and even the pinch had disappeared
quickly. But I turned enough to see who had been behind me. And
why.

Confusion turned to shock as I recognized
Tommy. He worked with the Queen’s bloodroses but he also studied
us, our blood, our species, and our genetic makeup. He held an
empty syringe.

“You’ve been given a light sedative,” said
Tommy.

I turned back toward Sebastian to express
how unacceptable this entire treatment had been but he had already
gotten what he had wanted. I only caught the fleeting glimpse of
him leaving, a group of armed guards at his heels. Sebastian had
gotten what he wanted.

I looked around at the faces still watching,
still judging, and still taking in my entire predicament. I had
called them. I had wanted them to watch. The only question I had
left to ask myself would be whether my performance had been good
enough to garner favor from the court to overthrow the Queen. A
moment later a remaining guard picked me up and tossed me
unceremoniously over his shoulder as the room went black. My last
thought - that I hadn’t had a chance to warn Penelope.

Picking up Prussia’s scent wasn’t difficult
once I knew where to look. Though faint, I could smell her fear. It
made my stomach turn that I smelled her in this way – as hunter
smells prey. But I had to hunt her scent to find her. I didn’t have
any other scent to go off of and while I couldn’t describe the way
she smelled I could pick her out of a crowd in an instant.

I found the building, not far from her
apartment and the park and way too close for comfort. I imagined
how Prussia must feel being inside. And it made me furious at what
kind of pain a vampire might inflict in a building like this.
Nothing good could be going on in a place like this.

Abandoned, creepy, and rat infested. It’s
what Lydia and I would have looked for if looking for a place to
torture. And I could smell it from the street. I entered the eerie
building. The smell of blood coated everything. Even if it had been
wiped clean, the stench still permeated from every surface. This
had the thick and unmistakable scent of a slaughter house for
humans.

I had brought a dozen of the Queen’s guards
with me and hadn’t intended to use even half of them. But finding
this building in the way that it was, I wondered if a dozen would
be enough. I knew my team would work cohesively and they knew my
intentions exactly. A clean sweep had simple instructions. Extract
the target and kill anything else that bothered to move, run,
scream, beg or breathe.

The only thing I could hear as my guards
moved through the building, starting from the top and working their
way down, was the blood drops splatter to the floor. Each floor I
heard another person extinguished by my men. My team made their way
down the floors quickly. The clean sweep would be complete any
moment.

I walked to the center of the large main
room of the building, right through the front doors and I could
feel my adrenaline begin to surge. I needed to wait until my guards
finished before I would know exactly where Prussia was and if she
was alright. I needed to wait but I didn’t want to. I wanted to rip
someone to pieces. And I wanted to find the bitch that took Prussia
away, the one that intended to cause her pain. I wanted that one
all to myself. My guards knew it and if they could, they would save
her for me.

I walked slowly with quiet steps. I didn’t
want to give anyone a clue that we were there. But I also wanted a
piece of the action. I waited for them to come to me, to stumble
upon their own deaths and to find that they lacked in the moment it
counted most. They had picked the wrong side. It would end here and
I would end it for them.

I turned in a circle as I reached the center
of the room and waited, patiently, for any motion or movement
towards me. Vampires were faster, stronger, swifter but I had been
more closely descended from the Queen than any of these mouth
breathers could ever dream and I would put them in the ground
permanently.

The room didn’t have much in it. The random
dust covered furniture had been surrounded by uncomfortable looking
chairs stacked high. Whoever had meant to come back for this stuff
had abandoned it long ago.

I continued to turn in a circle, looking for
any sign of life or death after life. I looked for any signs that
might point me to Prussia. My radio that connected me to my team
remained silent and I continued to hear the distant splatter and
drops of blood. But it became longer in between each death now. The
sweep would be coming to a close in a matter of minutes. It
concerned me because there had been no indication that we had found
Prussia yet.

When I heard the splatter on the ground
floor, on the floor I stood, that’s when I knew that something had
changed. I headed toward where I had heard the noise as fast as I
could go. I wound my way through dirty, littered, dark hallways
until I found the back of the warehouse.

A great room with windows beginning at the
top and reaching all the way to the ground floor meant that if they
had processed meat in this building it had been done back here. I
noticed random dry blood stains on the concrete floor. I scanned
the open space and headed toward a backroom. It looked like a
freezer space.

I ran as fast as I could. I couldn’t wait on
my team. They would have my back any minute and they would hear the
noise too. Something told me that Prussia didn’t have any time to
lose. They had had her long enough and there would be no telling
what they had done to her.

When I got near I could smell her perfume
without any trouble. It was mixed with blood that smelled sweet. It
made my stomach turn. The aroma made me furious with hunger and
ashamed that it was Prussia that I craved. I didn’t wait another
moment.

I grabbed the metal riveted door and forced
it open with all my strength in the event that it had been locked
from the inside. It crashed open and I saw her – the woman from the
park. Her face dripped with blood and the room wafted an
intoxicating aroma of death towards me. I fought off my urges, all
of them except one.

When my eyes landed on the chair in the
middle of the room, one vampire feeding on the blood drenched body,
my rage consumed me. I gave a roar as I went for the one feeding on
Prussia, glaring as though I were not invited to share. He ducked
his head back down to take one last drink. My most base instincts
took over and my rage had full reign.

“Kill her! Now!” screamed the woman, blood
foaming at the corners of her mouth.

Her eyes were wide with fear. I took the few
short steps to the vampire crouched to continue feeding on Prussia
and I grabbed his head. His teeth were sunk into Prussia’s wrist
and if I yanked him away he might rip what remained of her wrist
out.

She would bleed out in seconds, though from
the looks of things she had died hours ago. Blood soaked her from
head to foot. Her hair had become matted with her own blood. There
were deep gouges all along her body and I didn’t have much choice
on how to get his teeth out of her.

I went with what I knew. I used both of my
hands wrapped around his head to crush his skull. The bastard bit
down even harder. I evened it up with the hardest flex I could
manage. I knew he was about to ask for mercy. But before he could
beg I felt his skull collapse in my hands. Large chunks of his head
popped all over me, all over the room, and a large piece of brain
splattered right on the blond woman’s chest with a streak of his
blood slapping her in the face.

I could see her face begin to register what
had just happened but I didn’t wait for her response. I ripped off
the vampire’s arm at the shoulder and chewed through the flesh
surrounding the protruding bone. It took less than a second. My
carnal instincts assured me that if Prussia really was dead – this
would comfort me as justice. I used my hand to snap the end of the
arm bone into a point and looked at the blond haired woman.

Her face had turned into a twisted mess of
rage. Perhaps I had killed someone that mattered to her. Or perhaps
she just didn’t like having her party crashed. Either way, when I
snapped his arm bone and looked at her she took a step back. The
step back was a signal of retreat, the step that you can’t hide
because your fear is too great which is exactly what I wanted her
to feel. I wanted her to be more afraid than she had ever been in
her life.

No one came into the Queen’s domain to take
whatever pleased them. The vampire with the crushed skull moved
beneath where I stood, looking at the woman. The woman hissed at
me, small particles of blood spattering out at me. I could smell
the blood right before it hit my face. She had fed on Prussia.

I roared back at her and without losing eye
contact with her I plunged the sharpened point into the chest of
the vampire still wiggling in small movements on the floor until
the point slammed into the concrete floor underneath. I felt the
heat as he burst to flames and turned to ash at my hands.

The woman watched in horror as her fellow
vampire disintegrated into flakes as I continued to watch her. I
watched the pain wash across her face again and again, all passing
in mere seconds. When she finally looked at me I knew that I had
the fight I wanted and that she knew one of us wouldn’t make it out
of this room alive.

“Do you know how old I am?” she hissed at
me.

“How old you were,” I corrected, calmness
and control in my voice, “Did I know how old you were is what
people will ask…after I give you the eternal sleep,”

That seemed to piss her off plenty. She
leaped towards me and I jumped right into her path, wanting to stay
between her and Prussia. I didn’t expect for a single blow to fall
on me. Her hands moved swiftly and I knew after a few hits to the
head and body that she had training of some kind. She knocked me on
to my butt and I glared up at her from the floor.

“You’ve been trained by the Royal Guard,” I
thought out loud, realizing that she wasn’t as disconnected from
the court as I had been led to believe.

“You’ll definitely find out, now won’t you?”
she taunted me.

It made me think of Lydia but I had to push
it out of my mind as I watched the woman reach for Prussia’s
throat. Prussia sat perfectly still in the chair in the center of
the room drenched in blood.

I stepped between the woman and Prussia and
she let go. She kicked her leg up over my head and I knew what she
planned to do before she executed it but delivered it faster than I
could react. She used her leg to leverage herself out of my grip by
pushing on my throat with her calf and simultaneously kick me in
the head as she pushed me backwards. She did a cocky spin and
landed in a fighting stance, a smile across her face.

I hadn’t fallen but she had managed to get
the best of me easily enough. Her ability to fight had become
problematic. I stood for a moment to assess my next attack and my
ears pricked up. The team had reached this floor. The look on her
face suggested she realized I wasn’t alone and we would have
company soon. She began inching her way towards the door. I decided
now would be the best time, when she had other things on her mind
like an escape.

I ran to intercept her at the door and she
barely made it ahead of me, closer to the door but exactly where I
wanted her. I grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled as hard as I
could. I pulled her so hard that she lifted off the ground and flew
into the back wall, dropping hard to the ground. I didn’t wait for
her to get up. I ran to where she had fallen and snapped her left
leg. Blood splattered all over the wall. I picked her up by the
throat and carried her with one hand, feet barely dragging a bloody
path behind her, to where Prussia sat in the middle of the
room.