Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (38 page)

Then in a flash, the vampires came at her. They took turns alternately feeling her up and hitting her, ignoring her howls of protest and laughing at her attempts to fight back. The vamp from the theater had a cigar in his mouth, and decided that it would be fun to put it to her skin. Every time he ground the lit end into her skin he would snuff the fire, and so he would relight it and do it all over again. When the cigar was gone, he took the lighter itself to her skin. I was glad then that Lochlan was asleep so he didn’t have to hear the sordid details, as I had no doubt he’d shatter the windows yelling with rage.

A thought occurred to me then, and I gasped in horror. “Juliette, please don’t tell me…don’t tell me they raped you?”

Tears she’d until now held in check spilled from the corners of her eyes. “The second guy, the one whose scent I didn’t recognize, he wanted to,” she said softly. “Make a crack about wondering what shapeshifter pussy would feel like on his cock, and would it taste as sweet as the virgins he preferred to fuck. Movie theater guy wouldn’t let him, said they were under orders just to give me a good beating.
Didn’t stop the bastard from shoving his fingers inside me more than once.”

“Then he as much as raped you, that son of a bitch,” I whispered. I was crying by the time she finished telling me all she had endured. I wanted so much to take her into my arms then, to hold her and comfort her. And I wanted to break the necks of those two men with my bare hands for hurting her. I didn’t give a damn if that made me a monster—because in my mind they deserved to die.

Back to Top

“Where’s Mark?” Juliette asked, wiping at the tears on her face.

I wiped my own tears away. “I don’t know. He wasn’t in bed when I woke up,” I replied. “I’ll go see if he’s downstairs.”

She nodded and I rose. Peeking in my room, I noticed Moe and Cissy were gone, and so I figured he was outside with them. Downstairs I saw in the kitchen that Mark had indeed fed them, and a glance out the back window showed me that they were in their kennel. A glance out the side window, however, showed me that my truck was gone, which meant Mark wasn’t even on the premises.

This didn’t concern me right away. Although I had already come to expect him to let me know his comings and goings, he was obviously not required to. Perhaps he had gone to check on his parents, or even the horses and Angus, and he just hadn’t wanted to wake me. I went for the phone and picked it up off the base, dialing Harry’s number.

He answered on the third ring. “Morning, Saphrona.
You coming
to see your animals today?”

Well, that answered my question. Still, I asked him, “So Mark hasn’t been by there today?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Harry replied. “I just came in from feeding all the animals, including yours. No sign of him. Why, is something wrong?”

“No, nothing wrong.
Just that my truck is gone. His was stolen yesterday from the mall that his sister drove it to.”

“Well there ya go. He probably just went to talk to the police again.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. He probably just didn’t want to wake me unnecessarily. Thanks, Harry. I’ll come by later today to see to my animals, and change that dressing on Angus,” I said.

“Well, like I said, I just gave ‘em their breakfast, so you go ahead and take your time,” Harry told me.

“Alright.
Thanks again.” After hanging up, I realized I was frowning. It just didn’t feel…right…that Mark had left without telling me where he was going. I looked at the front of the fridge and didn’t see a note under any of the magnets. I went back into the living room and didn’t see anything on the end tables or the coffee table so I dashed into the office, finding nothing there, either—I even turned on the computer to see if he’d typed a note and left it on there. Running back upstairs to my room, I found no note on either bedside table or the dresser.

There was nothing from Mark.

Now I was definitely growing concerned.

“Saphrona?”
Juliette called.

I walked out of the bedroom and turned into her room.
“Yeah?”
I asked.

“Is everything alright? Did you find Mark?”

I wanted to tell her yes. I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily. But I was worried myself, and Juliette was no fool. She had to know just from my expression that something was amiss.

I shook my head. “No,” I told her. “He fed the dogs and put them outside, and when I saw that my truck was gone I thought maybe he was down taking care of the horses and Angus, but Harry said he hasn’t seen him. And he didn’t leave a note anywhere.”

“Call my parents. Maybe he’s checking on them,” she suggested.

Her tone was light, but I could tell she was already concerned. Still, I followed her suggestion and walked into my room again. Picking up the phone on the bedside table, I dialed the Singletons’ home phone number from memory. Monica picked it up on the second ring.

“Good morning, Singleton residence,” she greeted me formally.

“Mrs. Singleton, it’s Saphrona Caldwell,” I said.

“Oh, hello!
I didn’t recognize the number, even though I suppose I should have since Juliette called me from there the other day,” Mark’s stepmother said to me. “How is Juliette doing?”

I smiled a little in spite of my concern. “Very well, I believe. Lochlan brought in some more morphine to help control her pain, and something else to keep her from dehydrating. I think she slept most of the night, but she was awake when I checked on her this morning.”

“Oh, how wonderful!”
Monica exclaimed, her relief carrying over the phone line. “I’m so happy to hear that. Dan will want to speak to her, of course, and give her a piece of his mind for making me worry.”

“How did he handle things last night when he came out of the trance?” I asked.

“Oh, he came out of it on the way home. Thought he had dozed off in the car,” she told me. “I told him that I’d just gotten a call from Juliette and that she had been talking to the Columbus police because Mark’s truck had been stolen. Has he reported that yet, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “We decided last night to wait until Juliette woke up so we could see if she remembered anything about what happened to her before we did that, in case she parked it somewhere before she was jumped and she was on camera.”

“Oh, well certainly that makes sense. Did you talk to her at all? Did…did she remember anything?”

Her voice was quiet as she said the last words, and I hated to have to crush the poor woman. I decided that the details weren’t my place to say, so I only gave her a rough approximation. “She had just got out in the parking garage at the Easton Mall when she was jumped. They knocked her out and took her somewhere, she didn’t know where, and then they abused her pretty badly. She remembers almost everything, except being brought back here. She didn’t say, but she must have passed out at some point because she talked about what they did to her, and then she woke up here, and that’s all she remembers.”

I heard Monica’s
breath
hitch. “What did they do to my baby girl?” she asked quietly.

I sighed. “I think I will let Juliette tell you about it, if she chooses to. She may find it difficult, given that you’re her mother. But suffice it to say it was plenty bad enough, and the vampires who did this won’t live long after we find them. I promise you that.”

She said nothing at first after I made that declaration, and then she said, “Good.”

I gave her another moment to process that before I finally got into the real reason I had called. “Listen, Mrs. Singleton—”

“Oh, call me Monica, please,” she interrupted. “Mrs. Singleton seems rather formal, and I know that we’ll be more than mere acquaintances sometime in the near future.”

“Alright then, Monica—
have
you seen or heard from Mark today?”

“No, I haven’t,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

That was the same thing Harry had said to me earlier:
Is something wrong?
I tried not to worry but it was hard not to when both Mark and my truck were gone without a trace.

Especially after his sister had been kidnapped, beaten, and tortured for hours on end just the day before.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said carefully, not wanting to alarm her. “He’s just not here right now, and he didn’t leave a note of any kind telling where he was going. I’m sure he just decided not to wait to go to the police when he got up, and he didn’t think to leave a note.”

“I suppose that’s possible, but it’s really not like Mark not to leave a note,” Monica said. “Have you checked your cell phone? Maybe he thought about it after he left the house and sent you a text.”

“No I haven’t,
hold
on a moment,” I said, grabbing my cell phone out of the nightstand drawer. I waited the twenty seconds it took to boot up with growing impatience, and when the screen finally said it was ready, I keyed in my password, and waited another thirty seconds. When I didn’t hear the tell-tale beep that notified me of waiting messages, I began to grow seriously concerned.

“Damn,” I muttered. “He hasn’t left me a message. I’m going to dial his cell.”

Monica agreed. “Please do—now I’m getting worried about him.”

I opened up the dialer function on my phone and tapped the speed dial for Mark’s cell phone, holding my cell to one ear and the houseline handset to my opposite shoulder.

My heart stopped for a beat when I heard the trilling ring of Mark’s cell phone coming from the nightstand on the other side of the bed.

I nearly dropped both phones as I leapt across the bed and yanked the drawer to the end of its track. There was the offending cell phone, flashing and ringing, and I stared down at it in horror.

My rushing around must have woken Lochlan, or perhaps Juliette had, because that’s how he found me several seconds later, with Monica yelling through the telephone for my attention. I knew I looked at my brother with dread in my expression as I finally raised the phone to my ear and forced myself to say, “His cell phone is still here. Mark…

“…has disappeared.”

*****

Lochlan immediately raced downstairs and outside, returning seconds later to say,
“I followed his scent trail outside. It ends where your truck was parked.”

I forced myself not to panic. “There has to be a logical explanation for this. Monica, I will call you when I track him down.”

“Please do,” she repeated, and after saying goodbye to each other we hung up.

I looked at Lochlan. “His mother said it’s not like him to not leave a note. And I personally know it’s not like him to go anywhere without his cell phone—I can’t believe I didn’t see it in here earlier,” I said, ending the call to Mark’s cell.

“Saphrona, try to remain calm, and think. Where would he go?” Loch asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I called down to Harry’s and he said he hasn’t seen him. I suppose he could have gone to the store, or even the police station, but he agreed not to do that until he’d talked to Juliette.”

My brother stepped closer to me. “Did you look at his phone?” he asked, picking it up out of the drawer.

I reached across the bed and returned the house phone to its cradle, then slipped my own cell phone into my jeans pocket and took Mark’s phone from Lochlan. I flipped it open, grateful that, unlike mine, his phone was not password protected.

Or had he left it that way on purpose just this morning? I wondered as I pressed the menu button and checked his incoming call list. There was nothing there since last night, but I did find a text message from Juliette’s cell phone time-stamped for just two hours ago. I knew damn well that Juliette hadn’t even been given her clothes back, let alone her phone or her purse or anything that had been in it, so I opened the text.

Easton Mall parking garage, level 2B, 7 a.m.
Come
alone.

My eyes darted to the clock in the upper right corner of the screen, and saw that the current time was just turning to 8:00.

“Oh God, Loch,” I said, beginning to tremble. “He must have woken early and read this, and then left right after. That means he’s been gone at least an hour and a half and who knows what the hell they’re doing to him!”

My voice had risen in pitch with each word, until I was shouting. Lochlan took Mark’s cell phone from my hand and read the text for himself. He then reached for me and gathered me into his arms, holding me for a moment.
“Try to stay calm, sister.
You won’t be able to help him if you’re not thinking clearly,” he said.

“He’s right.”

I gasped and Lochlan turned sharply at the sound of Juliette’s voice. She was standing in the doorway of my bedroom wrapped up in the blanket from the bed.

“What the devil are you doing out of bed? And how did you manage to get your I.V. out?” Loch demanded.

She raised an eyebrow. “My mother is a nurse, Vampire Ken. I know how to manage an I.V.”