The Billionaire's Baby (Key to My Heart Book 3) (12 page)

Nia, he knew, was not so lucky.

If he could make it to his home hidden beneath the tree, then they'd be ok. Then they would hide out until the soldiers were gone and he would find a way to help Nia and everything would be fine. It would be all sunsets and rainbows and fluffy kittens and potatoes. He repeated this several times in an attempt to make his strength last more painfully slow steps forward.

Only to the tree.

He felt his knees begin to buckle before long and soon he had fallen. They were almost there though. It was only two or three yards away. So close.

Only to the tree.

He awkwardly crawled on one arm while the other held Nia tucked under him, almost dragging her on the ground, his eyes only on the base of the tree before them. He ignored the faint yells of the soldiers, he ignored how painfully cold the girl in his arms was getting, he ignored how his body was slowly going numb.

'
Please,
' he begged silently to anyone in the universe who would listen, '
please let us get there…'

That someone appeared to be listening.

Slowly, the tree got closer and closer until he collapsed against the leaves at its base, practically crying in relief. With a choked noise he shoved his shoulder up against the tiny lever at the base, only to find it immobile. The stupid contraption was stuck from the previous pounding he'd given it and he didn’t have the strength any longer to force it open.

Once, twice more he tried, and each time his trap door did not open. He pulverized the small piece of wood covering the entrance with weak fists, crying out now in frustration.

Their safety and security was only inches away and completely unattainable.

"Nia, Nia sweetie, you gotta help me!" He cried, dragging her up under his chest so she was pinned between the rough ground and his body, if they both pushed, then it would open. It had to open.

"Please! Just push on it a little! If you help then this thing will open up in no time!"

She didn't move. Her eyes didn't open. She didn’t acknowledge him at all.

"Please!"

He grabbed her arms, pushing them above her head against the tiny lever hidden in the base of the tree. He shoved at it again to no avail, finally collapsing fully onto the girl, clinging her against him. He felt two tiny tears slip down his face in frustration and desperation and...fear.

When was the last time he had cried? When was the last time he had feared for his life? Or another's?

Had he ever?

Heavy footsteps brought him back to attention, and he clung tighter to the limp girl under him who refused to breath or move or cry or be as weak as he was.

He felt the sharp point of the sword against the back of his neck, felt it pushing slowly against his skin until it broke under the pressure.

And then it stopped.

And it withdrew.

And Ellis nearly stopped breathing when he heard the sword being sheathed, still clutching the girl protectively, curling his body around her. They still clung to the lever together, Ellis's hands wrapped around Nia's tiny ones, as though it could still save them.

The General paused then bent down, trying to push aside the bewildered vampire, who only continued to cling tightly. He abruptly grabbed the girl's limp arm and yanked it towards him.

"Interesting." The General murmured, studying her tan flesh closely.

Ellis, watched in confusion as the man curiously studied Nia's wrist, one bony finger tracing a delicate mark on her wrist. At first, Ellis thought it was a burn or scar, but after a moment, it became obvious that it was simply a birthmark – shaped inexplicably like a tiny flower blossom.

At the General's touch Nia flinched and Ellis was glad to see her make a move of any sort, though he clutched her tighter instantly.

"Stay away!" The vampire hissed in an almost feral voice.

"I can save her." The General responded casually, "You both just have to come with me."

The General grinned at him cheekily, tossing orange, white streaked hair over his shoulder, obviously enjoying the frustration clouding Ellis's already dark eyes.

He knew there was a reason the General wanted them to go with him, he wouldn't just offer to heal Nia for no reason. But Ellis also knew he didn't have a choice. He was too weak to get Nia to her home, and she wasn't going to survive much longer. They'd probably just be killed anyways if he refused.

The General watched silently until Ellis closed his eyes in resignation, and before the affirmation had left his lips the General had stolen Nia away from Ellis and men suddenly surrounded the weak vampire, tying his hands behind him and lifting him easily off the ground, dragging him after the other two.

"My name's George!" The General called back perkily, half skipping off between the trees.

Ellis didn't speak, and could only watch the swinging, messy red braid dangle from over the General's arm as he strode off in front of them.

The walk was mostly silent. The wind blew tepid air into his face, the stars only glittered halfheartedly, and the owls refused to hoot. There was no comfort.

He finally closed his eyes, let his head fall forward as though he were sleeping, and listened to the aggravating crunch of the leaves, dry and brittle, beneath the heavy booted feet of the soldiers carrying him. They must've been young, probably as old as Nia, give or take a year or so.

Suddenly, his face hit the dirt and as he reared back in shock he found Nia lying on the ground in front of him, George bent at her side. The boys still stood beside Ellis, gripping the back of his shirt in quiet force. They didn't look at him, not even the sick looking girl laying in the dirt, only at their commander.

Perhaps the soldiers pitied them.

George looked up at Ellis and smiled, then grabbed Nia's loose tunic, whipping it off over her head, leaving her in a tiny white undershirt that hit just a bit above her navel and her torn leggings. She shivered when her back hit the slightly wet ground, body tensing up into a rigid plank. Ellis yanked forward instinctively to grab hold of her, but found himself still restrained.

He couldn't do anything except glare wickedly and summon as much hate into his expression as possible.

George bent down, smiling at him again before leaning over the gaping hole in Nia's stomach. It was disgusting looking, all red torn flesh and dark blood which still ran like a tiny waterfall at every movement.

His fingers were delicate and knowing like a doctor's would be, softly examining. Nia never stopped shivering. At least she was alive. Ellis’s eyes never left the pair, though he was in no shape to help if George did something unscrupulous.

He flipped her over, examining the tear that had just missed her spine before nodding slightly. "Mhm, mhm."

Then the General simply ran his finger down the cut on her back, the huge hole mending itself slowly behind the touch of his finger. He flipped her over and did the same her to her tummy.

"All gone!" He cried, patting Nia's head as her eyelids flickered, shivering stopping. Color almost began to swell back into her cheeks.

George bent down so his face was lever with hers, grinning all the while, "Hey cutie! You feeling better?"

She shrank back instantly, a wilted flower, eyes darting to Ellis. She almost reached out for him, he could tell by the upward twitching in her small arms, but changed her mind and kept them stiff at her sides. He hadn't ever seen fear like that in her eyes before.

He hated it.

George grabbed her shoulders and twisted her roughly towards him, forcing her to look back to him, and that was when she slapped him harder than she had ever slapped Ellis.

Without blinking, he backhanded her right back, making her cry a strangled, shocked cry that Ellis never wanted to hear come from her again and leaving her collapsed once more on the ground. Her lip, busted and bruised, trickled crimson.

A strange, angry glare clouded her eyes, which Ellis quickly recognized as being used on him several times, and knew instantly what she was going to do in swift retaliation.

For a reason he couldn't quite understand, Ellis panicked. He knew in his gut that if Nia showed George her little plant powers that something bad was going to happen. Something very, very bad.

He opened his mouth to yell at her not to do anything, but as soon as he did he found his face planted hard in the dirt, leaves and dirt clods finding its way into his mouth, leaving it feeling gritty and disgusting. He spat and squirmed, but was only shoved farther into the dirt.

He was as useless as an ordinary human right now.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't-

He felt the loose forest floor beneath him quiver, felt the whoosh of vines springing free from the brown surface, his heart thundering wildly.

"Nia…" He whispered into the dirt, squeezing his eyes tighter shut as he heard Nia cry out again and hit the ground hard next to his head.

"I knew it!" George announced triumphantly, “Boys, we’ve captured ourselves a wonderful prize.”

And then the warmth of Nia next to his head was gone, and then everything went black for Ellis.

Chapter Four

When Ellis finally came to consciousness, he was in a dark room where even his most keen vampire eyes struggled briefly to make out his surroundings. The room was small, he could judge that much, and must've been thrown together as a shoddy dark room to keep him safe from the sun's harmful rays.

And he was not alone.

The flash of a braided head ducking away from him alerted him to that fact, and with a complete disregard for the fact that the person was hiding from him, in an instant he ran quickly forward, taking the form into his desperate arms with a relieved cry that cut short almost before it had left his lips.

The girl in his arms was not Nia, as he'd originally thought, it wasn't possible.

Her braid was much too neat, her hair was much too brown, she was much too tall, and when she glanced slowly over her shoulder at him he noticed her eyes were blue and not green – and there were none of Nia's telltale childish freckles.

"Who are you?" The vampire demanded, gripping hard onto her arms to keep her from breaking away, eyes darting around the room for his absent redheaded companion.

The stranger only began to sob softly, making strange squeaking noises that Ellis guessed were her attempts at speaking while she practically choked on her tears.

"M….m….m….my….waaaaaahhhhhhhh-"

Ellis clamped his hand hard over mouth, frustration making his right eyebrow twitch angrily.

"Just say the name for now." He hoped it wouldn't take her another ten minutes just to get that much out.

He needed to find out why she was in with him in the first place. Surely George and the soldiers weren't so stupid that they would put him in a small, boxed in area with only a defenseless girl when he was in need of blood.

Unless that was their plan. Which, he supposed, would explain her incessant crying.

"I see you found your snack." A calm voice called from the corner.

Ellis whirled, not releasing the sniveling girl, eyes landing on the golden pair of George's own, who had slipped in through a side door.

"So it was on purpose, then." The vampire replied.

George simply nodded, staring carefully at his perfect nails.

"Nia…where's the girl?"

"Safe. Unfortunately you're running too low on blood to be of any use to us, so feed up and in an hour or so we'll move you to Nia's location."

Then he slipped lightly through the door behind him without another word, the sound of a lock turning echoing in Ellis's ears.

Ellis silently looked down at the girl who had begun shaking and sobbing once more in his unrelenting arms.

The vampire had no choice. Nia was his goal right now, and if he had to work with George to get to her, then he would do just that.

He hesitated for only the briefest of moments as her braid brushed against his cheek before he bit into her neck, sucking her dry in only a few minutes.

Never before had he so heavily despised a feeding. Ellis did not like to be forced into anything.

Then, in disgust, he threw the limp body away from him, ignoring the lifeless thump her body made against the floorboards as he turned his back to her and walked away to wait at the door.

He could break down the door, he was positive. Running his fingers across the ragged wooden edges of the door, feeling how thin and frail it was, he was tempted to break it just to show off that he could.

So why would he choose instead to wait for an annoying, loudmouth, short, frustrating, potato growing – ah, never mind – he would definitely wait to get her back.

With a smirk that tightened his pale lips into thin, hard lines and made his onyx eyes seem even colder, he leaned back against the wall beside the door. Slowly, he slid down to sit on the ground as his head fall unceremoniously against the wall.

In boredom, he silently began counting the wooden planks in the ceiling as the compacted dirt and mud which had been so unartfully mashed together between the timber pieces sprinkled down onto his face and got into his eyes and made him think only of sweet, cinnamon colored freckles.

It was hours and hours later, Ellis felt, when he finally heard the lock click once again, the door swinging open and bumping up against the vampire's outstretched legs. He stood tiredly, and with a yawn and a slight sweep over his face to remove the dirt, turned to look at George.

George smiled at his dirt smeared face, neither man sparing a glance at the body still laying on the ground in front of them nor paying attention to the red stickiness on the floor that clung to the bottoms of their shoes and made a funny, suction cup noise with each step they took.

"Where are we going?" Ellis asked as they walked slowly from the room to the outdoors, where the vampire could see the faint hinting of light from between the trees.

"The prison. You'll be in a different cell from your friend, but besides you two there's only one other person right now. For now, you will be safe from daylight." George waved his hand brusquely, as though he didn’t want to worry about such details as keeping a vampire safe.

Ellis nodded absently, quickly trying to formulate an escape. He was strong enough to break metal bars in the cell. That would be no problem. He just had to make sure George wasn't around. He was a wily guy, Ellis was sure of that much, and with Nia forcing him to be extra careful he had to make sure that everything was executed properly.

"You need to tell me exactly how the sun affects you." The General said abruptly, turning to look at Ellis as his hand gracefully landed on his hip.

Ellis blinked once then crossed his arm, one eyebrow lifting, "We burn. Everyone knows that."

George was an inch away from Ellis's face in less than an instant, "I’m not a fool. If you don't tell me I'll just leave you out in the sun for a couple hours to test that hypothesis." The words he spoke were so cold that a chill ran up Ellis's spine.

He smirked at Ellis's glare, "Your price for my healing the girl is to aid us in our experimentation. We're quite aware that the sun's effects are different on each vampire, but we don't know the range of effects or why they're different. You will help us. Willingly."

The dark haired vampire opened his mouth to argue, eyes blazing in anger.

What George said was true, the sun did have slightly varying effects on vampires, however that effect was a vampire's most vulnerable weakness – if anyone knew the effect the sun had the vampire could be manipulated and controlled. And killed much more easily.

It would not be good if any enemy of Ellis's gained this information.

George interrupted Ellis's wandering thoughts after smirking at him one more time, "I'll give you a bit of time to think it over, but we can't allow you to see exactly where the prison is located."

"Wha-" Ellis started to say, before suddenly, with annoying familiarity, everything went black.

Long after Ellis was thrown roughly onto a hard, dusty floor, he was able to finally find his way back to consciousness once more, instantly yelling sleepy obscenities at George, who wasn't even in the area anymore.

At first the vampire's vision was strangely fuzzy, and he was unable to make anything out, however a familiar red across the room caught his attention.

The vampire instantly threw himself blindly forwards towards her, coming into swift contact with something hard and cold, leaving him pin wheeling backwards with an agitated groan, falling back once more onto the ground.

He gripped his head with a whining cry, glaring darkly in front of him at thick metal bars which kept him confined into a cramped space barely large enough for him to lie down in.

"Calm down, your friend's fine." A stranger's gruff voice called out in the darkness to him.

Ellis attacked the metal again in the direction of the voice, blindly assuming the voice belonged to one of the soldiers that had kidnapped them.

"She's pretty lucky, they weren't sure what size dose to give to such a little person. They thought she was a kid. Been out since they dragged her in here though,"

Ellis's blood ran suddenly cold, "Dose?"

"They drug all the prisoners who come in here. Easy to control."

"I'm awake, old man." Ellis's eyes swiftly located the man talking.

He was a burly sized, middle aged man with thinned out salt and pepper colored hair, sitting hunched in the corner of a cell next to Ellis. It was his cell that separated Ellis and Nia's. Those three chambers made up the tiny little jail they were trapped in.

"They didn't know how much to give a vampire either. So they had to guess. Takes away your strength." The man shrugged, not seeming to be at all concerned with the fact that a coldblooded legend of a vampire was only inches away.

Ellis paced silently at the side of his cell, eyes drifting from the man to the redheaded girl lying prone on the cell floor several feet away. Her hair was almost completely unbraided, the little blue ribbon just barely clinging into the curls of her hair which hid her face from his view.

"How long have you been here, oldie?" Ellis asked in a quietly accusatory tone, moving in dejection to sit beside him, the metal bars separating the pair of men, "How do you know so much?"

"Years. They talk about their little experiments all the time, and they've codenamed you 'Batboy'. It was easy to figure out." A smile almost ghosted the old man’s aged face.

Ellis gave a halfhearted laugh that was more of a grunt, nodding, "Ah. So, what do you do for fun over here?"

The man just closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his broad chest and leaning back against the stone prison wall.

Ellis looked away as well, tapping agitatedly on the wooden floorboards. He couldn't plan any kind of escape with Nia passed out, and the man wasn't providing any kind of decent conversation.

After a grueling five minutes of silence, Ellis felt as though he were about to explode with dullness, "Why are you here?"

"They destroyed my home, my family, my entire village." The man said quietly, anger creasing the valleys and hills of his worn face.

"You were lucky to have survived." Ellis responded, frowning.

The man responded with a bitter chuckle, "Lucky to be alone for the rest of my life? Lucky to wonder why I was the only survivor out of all my friends and family?"

"You're not the only one who's lost something, old man! Those soldiers have killed a lot more people than just your family and your friends, they've destroyed almost half of all the villages in Landrian. Thank about all of those people who are lonely out there! And they're still destroying, they're still killing people!" Ellis wasn’t sure where all this vitriol came from, the vampire was just guilty after all.

The door to the cell suddenly flung open, interrupting Ellis's unusually wise lecture as he jumped to his feet, stomach twisting in fury as he realized where the soldier was heading, past both his and the other man's cell.

Ellis suddenly went crazy, desperate to distract the soldier from Nia, flinging himself against the metal and hissing and yelling, anything to get the soldier's attention. It didn't seem to work.

The pale man finally stilled, fists clenched tight on the metal, gaze piercing the soldier. The old man remained on the floor, arms crossed over his broad chest, head down.

The soldier seemed fairly young, probably eighteen or so, around Nia's age. He bent over her, fingers pressing against her tan neck, the other hand on her chin so her face was turned to the wall away from Ellis.

"Just leave the girl alone, Remmy." The old man said, tiredly rubbing a hand across his brow

The brown haired soldier didn't look up, grabbing Nia's wrist and pressing his fingers against it.

"Just checkin' her pulse. We weren't sure if we overdosed her, I mean she's still sleepin'..." The young soldier replied, glancing towards them.

"She's fine." Ellis hissed, gripping the bars even tighter. All he wanted was for the boy to get away from her.

Ellis noticed Nia's fingers twitch slightly, running across the unfamiliar floorboards, though her eyes remained closed. Unfortunately, her movement did not go unnoticed by the trained soldier, and he tackled her drowsily flailing limbs the moment Nia cried out a shrill, "El-!"

Remmy's hand covered her mouth instantly, using his body to keep her own down. Through her drugged stupor, the girl was barely able to move at all, the soldier’s strength unwarranted.

Ellis heard her muffled screams against Remmy's calloused hand, yanking Ellis's attention back, Nia's head still turned away from him. Ellis then realized, with a start, that Nia didn't know he was there.

She must've thought she was all alone. After all they’d been through, he couldn’t let her think that.

The vampire opened his mouth to call back to her, but the old man suddenly got up, grabbing Ellis's wrist and shaking his head, "If you let her know you're here she might freak out more and get into even more trouble." He whispered, frowning, "They don't exactly excel in patience."

One of Nia's hands shot out suddenly from under the boy once more, attacking the wooden boards underneath the wrestling pair, desperately running her hand again and again over the floor, pulling slightly at the boards.