Thrall (A Vampire Romance) (5 page)

He was like a living statue, a chunk of marble that got up and walked around on its own. Everything about him was bleached white, his skin his long hair pulled into a severe ponytail, even his fingernails. Like there wasn’t a spot of color to him, except his eyes. His eyes weren’t really brown, they were a dark red, like the color of dried blood that’s still a little wet.

Even his clothes were white, a freaking white suit, the white broken only by black shoelaces and an honest-to-God string tie. He sat down next to me and looked over and I guarded my drink, tucking it up under my chin. I thought about moving away, hopping one bar seat down, but I didn’t want to be rude.

Sitting to my left, he took my hand.

I tried to pull away, but it was like yanking on my hand, stuck in a stone crevice. I could feel the power of his grip in my joints as he examined the ring on my finger. Finally he let go.

“Get lost,” I said, in my toughest voice.

He leaned on his hand and smiled at me with pale bloodless lips, like two pink worms.

“This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to run, and I’m going to chase you.”

Chapter Four

I just stared at him.

“W-what?”

He sat back and adjusted his coat, running his fingers over the lapels. I saw all his fingernails were shaved to sharp points.

“It’s now eight forty-three. If you can make it out of the city by midnight, you will be free. I’ll give you a ten minute head start.”

I continued to stare at him.

He sighed. “This is my favorite part, watching your perception of the world crumble. No, I am not insane. No, this is not a joke. No, no one can help you. Your time begins now. I’d run if I were you.”

With a little flicker of a smile he stepped down from the bar stool and walked out into the crowd behind me. I turned around and around, but as soon as he left my peripheral vision he was just gone, even though he should have stood out like a sore thumb. The bartender came over to me and looked at my drink.

“Ma’am? Another?”

“No, thanks,” I absently slid a twenty across the bar. He could keep the change. “Did you see that guy?”

“What guy?”

“The one sitting here just now.”

“I didn’t see anybody.”

A lump formed in my throat.

“Is there security here or something?”

“Yeah, over there.” He nodded towards the elevators.

I dropped off the stool and walked across the casino floor. In the back of my head I was ticking the seconds off that ten minute head start. I had to get Andi and get the hell out of here. If that guy was stalking us he might do something to her.

Security would help. It was their job. They would secure me, right? I spotted a bored looking guard in a faux-cop uniform. The rent-a-cops here were serious business. They carried guns. I went right up to him.

“Hey. Some guy just threatened me at the bar.”

The guard stirred on his feet and looked down at me. He was a big guy, built like a linebacker, and had his thumbs perched on his duty belt. His hands weren’t helping it stay up any more than the big paunch rolling it forward. He pulled the belt up and adjusted himself.

“He here now?”

“No. I lost track of him. Look, I want to get my friend and get out of here before he comes back. Can you help me?”

He shrugged. “Sure, hon. Where’d you see your friend last?”

“At that… revue thing,” I said, choking down the embarrassment. “She was heading into the theater.”

“That show ended fifteen minutes ago. Were you supposed to meet up with her?”

Fifteen minutes ago? That made no sense, I was only there for a few minutes. Then I remembered what the man at the bar said. Eight forty-three. That was almost two hours after we arrived. Had I been sitting at the bar that long? I clutched my head, trying to remember. It was like there was this blank spot in my mind between stepping away from the slot machine and the strange pale man confronting me. The guard was staring at me.

“You alright?”

“No, no, I’m not.”

I swallowed. The lump in my throat was joined by butterflies in my stomach. Any worse and I’d be vomiting cliches. I looked around the room, trying to slow my breathing. I was starting to panic. I wanted to go home. When I got my hands on Andi, I was going to lock both of us in the hotel room until it was time to catch our flight tomorrow. I hated this place. The car. She probably went back to the car to wait for me there.

I walked back to the casino floor and looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Andi strutting around the room, but all I saw was a jumble of strangers and flashing lights and the sounds made my head hurt. Fluttery panic filled me from my toes to my throat and I had to leave. I ran back through the casino floor to the parking garage.

I went up to the valet counter, and realized Andi had the slip in her pocket. Damn it.

The attendant looked up.

“Miss?”

“Is the red Mustang convertible still here?”

“Ma’am, we’ve got two red-“

“I was in it,” I snapped, exasperated. “Me and another girl. I know you remember us.”

“Oh, yeah. She left.”

My stomach sank. No. No way, Andi would never abandon me. She may have had an acidic personality sometimes, but she was never cruel. No, if
she
couldn’t find
me,
Andi would be raising holy hell, leading a train of security guards and concierges and freaking James Bond if she could find him, all around this casino.
 

She’d be panicking right now, throwing a tantrum on the casino floor until I showed up. I’d been through that before, or something like it. One time we got separated on the class trip in high school and Andi had a panic attack. Even after she found me it took hours for her to stop crying. No, this wasn’t right at all.

“Did she leave with anybody else?”

“Yeah,” the attendant shrugged. “Tall, old guy. I guess he was old. All white hair.”

My stomach dropped through my knees.

Oh. Oh God.

Instinct kicked in. When I started college my Mom drilled it into my head that the first thing I should do if I felt threatened was find a crowd, a big crowd in someplace public, and get the attention of the police and stay there until somebody came for me. So I turned and I ran.

One guy was not a crowd, even with a few valet parkers further up the ramp hanging around waiting to pull new cars into the spots. I went back into the casino, hoping the crowd and public space would protect me. As I ran out towards the table games I realized I was being stupid, panicky. I could just call Andi and find out where she was. I slipped my hand in my pocket.

Nothing. My phone was gone, and to my rising panic, so was my driver’s license. I had nothing in my pockets but a few folded up twenties.

This. Could not. Be happening.

It didn’t matter that the gambling floor was huge, it felt like the walls were falling in on me. So I ran. I ran all the way through, legs pumping, up the front steps to the doors and threw myself outside into the hot night air, under the blinding lights that blocked out all the stars, and when I turned around I saw him walking calmly through the casino, passing by the revelers inside like he was walking through raindrops, rusty eyes locked on me. I couldn’t hear him from so far away but I clearly saw him mouth the words,
time’s up
.

I pushed out into the crowd and let myself be pulled into the flow of foot traffic. The lights were too bright, the crowd too noisy. Everywhere there was yelling, shouting, laughter, camera flashes and drunkards wrapped up in beads waving around huge drink cups. A guy in a foam rubber Michael Jackson costume tried to grab me and pull me into a photo.

I wrenched free of his rhinestone-studded glove and ran. There had to be a cop here. Las Vegas was crawling with cops in cars, on foot, on those Segway things, they were
everywhere
, but as I looked I saw not a single uniform or badge anywhere in the crowd.

I wasn’t even sure where I was, just on the Strip. A sign marking the next cross street marked it as
Tropicana Avenue
. I vaguely remembered passing that way on the way to the hotel, earlier in the day.

That was it! Get back to the hotel. I could use the phone there, call Andi, figure this out. Eventually she’d have to come back, even if she was out looking for me, right?

She left with a man with white hair.
It didn’t make any sense.

I looked back. He wasn’t there, it was just the crowd.

I started to step into the road and jumped back as a taxi rounded the corner, blasting its horn at me. The DON’T WALK sign was lit in baleful red, warning me to halt with the cluster of twenty or thirty people all around me. That was it! A taxi.

I could hail a cab, ride back to downtown. I remembered reading in the trip guide not to walk too far up the Strip after dark, past the last casino it was a seedy area and there wasn’t a lot of light. I started giggling to myself. I might get mugged. Wouldn’t that be hilarious!

I turned around and looked again, this way and that. Then I spotted him, reflected in the glass, but when I turned to find him he wasn’t there and when I looked back, the reflection was gone. Then I turned around and he was
ahead
of me, posted on the other side of Tropicana Avenue, waiting to cross my way.

I turned and ran in the opposite direction.

I pushed through the crowd, ignoring jeers and stares, mumbling my apologies as I ran down the sidewalk against the flow of foot traffic. I moved to the edge of the sidewalk and saw a gap in the oncoming cars, and I ran for it. I darted across the road to the median, stopped, and ran again. A horn blared behind me and I sobbed out loud, throwing my gaze everywhere in a frantic search. He was behind me, I knew it. I could feel his eyes on my back, feel him getting closer, moving up on me with every breath. A siren blared out in a quick woo-woop.

“Oh thank
God,”
I shouted.

I ran over to the car as the cop stepped out, hefting his flashlight.

“Ma’am? What the hell are you doing in the middle of the road?”

“Help me!” I screamed. “There’s a man following me.”

By now I didn’t care if they arrested me. I wanted inside that cop car.

“Who?”

“Please let me get in the car,” I begged, I pleaded. “I’ll tell you everything, just let’s get inside, I’m begging you.
Please.”

“
Okay, ma’am. Let’s just take a deep breath, and… fine. Get in.”

He opened the back door, and I jumped in. I didn’t care, I just wanted out of there.

Then I saw him and screamed.

“Don’t get in!”
 

It was too late. The cop sat down, and looked over at the pale-haired man sitting in his front seat with something like confusion on his face, before the man in white reached over and with casual, shocking ease plunged his fingers into the cop’s throat.

There was a struggle. His gun came out but didn’t go off. The pale man held the cop down by the shoulder with one hand and pulled his throat right out of his neck with the other, followed by a hot red gush of blood down the front of his uniform shirt and an awful thrash that sent gore flying everywhere. Hot droplets hit my face and I screamed in raw, liquid terror and threw myself at the door, but there was no handle on the inside.
He
got out and
he
opened the door.

“Go on then, run.”

I ran. I got out and I ran full tilt down the road, heedless of the cars. I ran up onto the sidewalk and threw myself through the crowd. I was covered in blood. I could feel it hot and sticky on my face, soaking my clothes, but it was like I was invisible. No one paid me any mind at all. I stopped a man, grabbed him with my hands and shook him but he just stared flatly at me until I let go, then walked on as if nothing had happened, and the woman holding his arm didn’t react either.

I spun around on my heels. Nobody noticed me and I couldn’t see the pale man, but I could hear him. His voice was lower than the noise of the crowd but I could hear his sing-song chant cut through it all anyway, threading through all the noises of footsteps and speech and every other noise of the city, even the distant crack of fireworks that sent pale red light rippling over the world.

“
Run, run, run, fast as you can.
”

God help me, I ran.

I was never a very physical person, but raw terror can do amazing things. I ran until my lungs burned. I ran full tilt, feet leaving the ground, throwing my arms like an Olympic sprinter, leaning into it. I knew one thing. We weren’t far from the edge of town. Something deep inside me laughed. What did get out of town mean? Leave the city limits? Away from the casinos? Did I have to get to Henderson, or catch a flight?

When it finally dawned on me it sucked the wind out of my sails. I stumbled. I almost fell. The certainty and dread were like a rock settling on my back, as I realized that head start or no, this wasn’t a game I was supposed to win. He was toying with me.

My lungs burned and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t catch my breath. I was shaking all over, a cold sweat slick on my back. It was hot when I first ran outside but I was freezing now, and I realized with a start that the Luxor was to my right and ahead there were no more lights. I wasn’t that far after all. I ran, but this time it was a slow jog, all the energy sapped from my aching muscles, the dull weight of dread in its place. The dark ahead of me yawned, the outline of distant hills black against the purple sky. The airport was off to my left.

I saw the sign. Drive Carefully.

Then he got me.

The pale man folded out of the shadows, and had me before I could do anything but scream as he lifted me bodily from the sidewalk, my legs flailing in the air. I kicked, I screamed, I scratched, I tried to bite him. I
fought
. I didn’t want to let him take me but he wouldn’t stop.

When fighting didn’t work I begged and screamed and wept, and when he dropped me some dull stupid part of me thought it worked, he would take pity and let me go, but he didn’t. He pinned me down in the scraggly scratch grass and dirt by the side of the road and threw his weight down on top of me and I fought to wriggle free even as I begged him to stop, to have mercy on me.