21. Oscar
Chapter 21
Oscar
T he neighborhood was eerily quiet as the vampires assembled across from the covenhouse in Canarsie. There were seven of them: Oscar, Lillian, and Freddie, of course, and then four newer additions to the Grosvenor coven. The two brothers, Alan and Pip, had come over from London a few months after Freddie and Lillian had. They spoke with Geordie accents, which Oscar loved, and they dressed like they’d been following the Ramones around for a decade. They looked nearly identical, even though Alan was a few years older. If Pip didn’t have a septum ring, Oscar would have trouble telling the two apart.
The other two vamps were Veronica and Kyle, and they were actual fighters. Before they’d been turned, they’d won bouts as professional kickboxers, which meant they had a better knowledge of combat than most vamps, who tended to rely on their claws and brute strength. Veronica and Kyle were married and had an easy, sarcastic rapport, no matter what they were doing. That included kicking ass.
“Not a fuckin’ thing happening here.” Pip walked into the street toward the old church.
“Be careful,” Lillian called out in a gruff monotone. “We can’t know if they’ve laid a trap for us.”
“Only one way to find out,” Alan said as he followed his brother. Veronica and Kyle looked at each other and grinned, then took off as well.
“Will they ever grow up?” Lillian asked.
“Give it a century or so,” Freddie answered, then turned to Oscar. “Stay close to Lillian.”
The three crossed the street as Pip kicked down the front door. The lock snapped easily. The vampires piled into the old church.
It was empty.
Rows and rows of empty wooden pews. Most of the Christian paraphernalia had been removed, but the seating and the shape of the room gave away its ecclesiastical purpose. As did the small stained-glass windows—the two at the front, and two more at the back. Being inside a city block, it didn’t have the same real estate for grand depictions of saints and the like, but every window was filled with colored, opaque glass.
“Were they ever here?” Oscar asked Lillian. “Even the scents are muted.”
Lillian shook her head. “It makes no sense.”
“Lillian and Oscar, you take the basement,” Freddie ordered. “Alan and Pip, investigate the vestibule and choir loft. I’ll look at the chambers behind the old sanctuary.”
Everyone sprang into action. Oscar strode to the stairs to the right of where the altar once must have been. A quick spiral down, and Oscar and Lillian found themselves in what looked to be the rec room they’d seen the night before. Folding chairs, a couch, a few tables. But equally empty as the upstairs.
Oscar moved toward the coffee table. The pictures of him and Trent were gone. He surveyed the area. At the rear of the room was a dark hallway that went further into the building. They’d need to look back there.
Lillian flipped over the couch cushions, then lifted the whole thing to inspect underneath.
“There’s not even crumbs,” she said. “Someone had to have come back to get the pictures. And they vacuumed? No crumbs, no dust bunnies, not a drop of blood splattered anywhere.”
“It’s odd,” Oscar said. “They must know we’ve been surveilling the place. Why would they?—”
A flicker of movement from down the hallway caught his eye, and he was off, flying across the old carpet into the darkness.
“Oscar, wait!”
A figure turned into one of the rooms in the back, and he followed, so fast that everything was a blur. Maybe he was in a supply room or something? No time to look. He had the fleeing figure in his sights.
Whoever it was tucked themself between some shelving and squeezed into an out-of-place hole in the wall. Oscar followed, not letting up, not wanting to take the chance of losing them. The loud metal crash behind him barely even registered. Had someone slammed an industrial door? It didn’t matter.
He was in a tunnel now, crude and crumbling, the walls a mix of concrete and earth. He moved quickly through, although there was enough dust and debris to know that the passage was a new addition. Ahead, it opened up into a larger room, and a hulking form waited there for him.
It was Elliott.
“My mate.” A few thin beams of light shone down on the brute’s pale, square face from a grate at street level. His wore a cruel smile. He wore his usual uniform of a tight black t-shirt and black jeans with combat boots. How Oscar could have fallen in love with someone with such a boring sense of fashion, he’d never know.
“We’ve had this conversation already. I am not your mate. I do not belong to you.” Oscar stood, his hands on his hips, not backing down. He was done with fear.
“I am the coven master of the Canarsie coven, and you are in my territory.” The madness of petty power flashed in his eyes. “You’ll do what I say. And I say you are my mate. I knew it from the first time I saw you. Your pretty face was so lost, so pathetic. I brought you in. I took care of you. You owe me.”
“What do I owe you?!” Oscar’s voice broke, but he couldn’t back down. “You did nothing but torture and starve us.”
Elliott’s lips curled into a sneer. “It made you stronger, didn’t it? Now you can fight as well as command the mind. Now you are fit to sit beside me as I rule the empire I am building.”
Oscar rolled his eyes. Elliott had always been ridiculous, but this was a truly grandiose delusion. “I think my coven will have something to say about that.”
“Oh really? Where are they?” Elliott made a show of looking around the dark room. “I don’t think they’re coming.”
For the first time, Oscar really took in his surroundings. The atmosphere was damp, and the faint smell of sewage wafted through the air. The walls were in bad shape, shedding pieces of concrete at every turn. He wasn’t sure if he was in an ancient subway tunnel or some kind of waste management artery. All he knew was that it was dirty, it stank, and Elliott was completely at home.
And that Lillian and Freddie were not right behind him.
“A clever little trap, installing a steel door where the tunnel meets the building. A strong one. No one’s coming. By the time they get through that barrier, we’ll be long gone.”
“Gone where?” Oscar tapped his foot against the dirt. This did not look good. But he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Elliott laughed, low and cruel.
“I’m not going to give away the surprise! You’ll know when I carry you across the threshold.”
“And if I refuse?”
Elliott’s laugh died, and his eyes went cold. “I hope you’re smarter than that.”
Oscar wasn’t being caught unprepared, not this time. In one fluid motion, he pulled out a long knife that was strapped to his hip. Guns weren’t much use against a vampire, but Lillian had been training them in other weapons.
He lunged, and Elliott dodged, but not quickly enough. Oscar sliced into the side of his torso. It wasn’t deep, but it must have hurt. Elliott hissed and extended his fangs.
“You owe me. You were alone. I gave you a life.”
“How’s your eye, asshole?” Oscar slashed again, keeping himself grounded and balanced in his stance. Elliott stepped back, and the knife cut across the tight black t-shirt, exposing pale skin underneath.
“You trapped me in a house of torture,” Oscar grunted. “You used me and you drank from me. I owe you nothing.”
Elliott clawed at Oscar’s face. Oscar ducked, spinning to the side, and lunging once more with his knife. The long metal weapon bit into the muscular flesh. Elliott screamed, moving backward, deeper into the dark of the underground chamber.
“You are my mate!” Elliott growled, fleeing faster now. Oscar kept on him. Elliott might have brute strength, but Oscar had speed, and he wasn’t going to let Elliott get away. Eventually Lillian and Freddie would knock down the door, and he’d have his ex tied up with a neat little bow to deliver to them. This monster wouldn’t evade the justice he so richly deserved.
“If I was your mate, why did you never allow me to drink from you and complete the bond?”
Elliott was running now, no longer even keeping up the pretense of fighting back. There was another hole in the wall at the rear of the chamber. By the looks of it, it was another newly constructed tunnel. Elliott dove for it, and Oscar followed just behind.
“If I say you’re my mate, then you’re my mate!” Elliott growled. He was cruising around the twists and turns as the tunnel changed direction, but Oscar stayed on his tail. The walls of the passageway whipped by, but Oscar didn’t have a moment to take in where they were going. He had to stop Elliott. Eventually, they’d have to run into a wall, and Elliot would be done.
“How did you even become coven master?” Oscar called out to the fleeing vamp in front of him. “You don’t have much in the way of personality.”
“Fuck you!” The turns in the tunnel were coming fast now, enabling Elliott to escape his sight for a split second at a time. No matter. Oscar could keep track of him from his petulant yelling.
“Won’t be doing that ever again, lover,” Oscar taunted.
“I killed anyone who got in my way. That’s how.”
They cruised around a bend to a long stretch with a thick metal door at the end. It was open, but Oscar refused to let it close and separate them. He fished out a throwing knife from his left boot and tossed it hard at Elliott.
Elliott grunted as the weapon hit the small of his back. He slowed but did not stop. Oscar caught up with him, reaching out with his clawed hand, hoping to snatch his shirt and pull Elliott toward himself, but Elliott dove for the doorway.
Oscar dove right after him.
Oscar hit the ground to find it wasn’t ground any longer, but hard wood. He felt it bend and stretch under the impact. He jumped to his feet to face Elliott, but instead was faced with a wholly new environment.
This wasn’t another dirty underground tunnel. It was a room of some kind, spare and utilitarian. The walls were painted a bright white, with a small circular window off to one side. On the other, there were a couple of short wooden benches. Sitting on one was a woman in her sixties wearing a smart pastel skirt suit. She did not look happy.
Elliott loomed on the other side of the room, a smirk on his face. Oscar stumbled. The ground was shifting underneath him. What was happening?
“Close it,” Elliott ordered. The large metal clank of the heavy door closing echoed throughout the tiny area.
Before Oscar could turn to see who Elliott was speaking to, he was hit with a sharp pain in the back of his head, and it all went black.
“Are you my rescue party?” A sarcastic voice cut through the groggy haze as Oscar fought his way to consciousness. “I was expecting someone more competent.”
Oscar rubbed his eyes, encouraging his vision to come into focus. Regardless, he thought he knew who he was speaking to.
“Lavinia?”
“You know me?”
Oscar could see her more clearly now. She’d obviously been in her rumpled outfit for days, but other than that, she looked intact. She had a broad face that in other circumstances would have been kind and welcoming, and long silver hair.
“I know your nephew, Justin.” Oscar’s eyes focused on the round window. He could see more beyond it now. City lights twinkled across the surface of surrounding water…what the hell?
“We’re on a boat,” Lavinia said.
Of course. The small round window was a porthole. And that explained his unsteady footing.
Elliott had clearly been planning this for a while. An underground tunnel leading to a boat prison? That was not something you decided on a lark.
“Lovely. Where the hell are we going?” Oscar stretched out his arms above his head. He hadn’t been shackled or anything. They must have confidence in the locks on the doors.
“Nowhere yet.” Lavinia smiled, but there was no joy in it. “We’ve been out circling the Statue of Liberty for hours. I’ve been watching out the porthole.”
“Fucking Elliott,” Oscar muttered under his breath. He breathed in, and his vampire senses were assaulted with a strong, musky, animal smell. What the hell was that? He glanced around, but the room was plain and nearly empty. The only place the odor could be coming from was?—
“You’re a shifter! A wolf, by the smell of it.”
Lavinia nodded, her face expressionless.
“No wonder they kidnapped you,” Oscar said. “Justin said they kept you to feed from, but I couldn’t understand why they’d choose you. This makes more sense. You’re a wolf shifter. Your blood is potent.”
“So the big jerk keeps saying.”
“Why didn’t Justin tell us?”
“He doesn’t know.” Lavinia frowned, tapping her fingers on the side of her bench.
“How?! The smell is so strong!”
“Manners, child.” Lavinia sighed. “I raised him. He grew up around me. The odor doesn’t even register for him.”
Oscar rubbed the back of his head. A big sore spot pulsated at the crown. One of Elliott’s vampires must have clocked him.
“I’m surprised they’ve kept you alive. If you shifted at the right moment, you could do some damage.”
“Because they are greedy.” Lavinia crossed her arms and glared at the closed door separating the room from the rest of the boat. “They have been drinking from me often enough that I’ve been too weak to shift. They’re waiting to sell me off to a collector. There’s big money in trafficking shifters. I’ll probably end up in a cage in the corner of some ostentatious McMansion.”
Regret and grief rolled through Oscar at her words. Rhonda had been an alpha, the strongest wolf in her pack, and Elliott and his vampires had murdered her. She’d tried to help them, and it left her people without a leader. Freddie had said he would assist the Scopan Lake pack in any way he could, but still. That had been Oscar’s fault.
“Where is Justin?” Lavinia shifted in her seat.
Oscar’s muscles locked at the question. He flexed and unflexed his right wrist. Well, they were in this together. He shouldn’t start out by lying.
“He’s being held at the covenhouse.”
Lavinia growled, and the skin of her face rippled. She was trying to shift. The response was instinctual. Her family was in danger. After a moment, though, the undulations subsided. Lavinia remained human, although now the circles around her eyes had deepened even further.
She sighed. “Like I said, too weak to shift. Why is Justin your prisoner?”
Oscar raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “He betrayed us, gave away our location to Elliott and his goons. He was trying to save you, but my mate and I almost died.”
Lavinia shook her head ruefully. “Sweet boy. I appreciate his devotion, but I can take care of myself.”
“Maybe, but he doesn’t know that.” Oscar got up, walking over to the porthole and staring out at the bay. The line of the water was right at the height of the window. “You’ve searched for ways out?”
“There aren’t any.” Lavinia’s voice was cold as she attempted to control her burning rage. “There’s just the one door to the rest of the boat, and the one door in the hull where you came in. We could try to open that, but I’m pretty sure I would die as the water rushed in. I’m not as impervious to drowning as you are.”
Oscar brought his head to his hands. “I keep fucking things up. I should have waited for Lillian and Freddie. I should have never assumed Elliott was dead. I’m the reason all of this happened.”
“That’s a bit egotistical,” Lavinia said, cocking her head and smirking. “I certainly didn’t have ‘locked up below decks on a tour boat’ on my bingo card.”
“Wait, this is a tour boat?”
“That’s how they don’t get stopped by the water cops, or whatever the hell they’re called. They do cruises back and forth from the Statue of Liberty.”
Oscar stood up from the bench. He looked around the room, peeking into every nook and cranny, but other than the stray candy bar wrapper, it was totally bare. One of these vamps had a sweets addiction.
“You have a mate?” Lavinia asked.
“Yes,” Oscar replied, circling the room once more despite the futility of it.
“He’ll come for you. Mates always do. My mother would have torn the throat out of anyone that dared lay a hand on daddy.”
Oscar plopped back down on the bench with a sigh. “He’s human. We don’t have a way to communicate because we haven’t completed the bond. He’s fragile.”
Lavinia laughed, a low, rich sound. “Fragile? I doubt that. No one who was chosen by fate to mate a supernatural would be fragile. I doubt he’ll let his humanity stop him, and if I know Justin, he’ll be on his way as well, the minute he escapes from whatever cell you’ve got him in.”
“I don’t want either of them here! They’re safer staying away.”
“That’s not what family does, sweetie.” Lavinia smiled, and it was wide and kind, if a little ferocious. “Family comes when danger calls.”
Oscar hummed softly. He hadn’t had much of that kind of support in his life. Those six years with his foster dad Alexander, he’d gotten a taste of it. He hoped to show Trent the same.
He stood. “Okay. I can’t talk to Trent, but I can contact my coven master. They’ll be here soon enough to get us out.”
Freddie?
He waited for his master to respond. After all, he was sure Freddie was busy with whatever shenanigans were happening back on land. It’s possible they were attacked after Elliott lured Oscar away.
Freddie? Need some help here.
One minute of waiting turned into two, and then into five, and still no response. Oscar began to pace. Why wouldn’t Freddie answer him? Surely they’d realized that he’d been captured.
Lavinia gave him a hard side-eye glance. “Not workin’, huh?”
Oscar shook his head and pressed his lips together. Had Freddie been knocked unconscious? Or was it possible to block the bond between a vampire and his coven? He hadn’t thought so, but now he was questioning it.
He threw up his hands. It didn’t matter. The link wasn’t working, and they had to move on to a different solution.
“Okay, we have to figure this out. They’re not going to leave us alone here forever. I could try to Compel Elliott, but I doubt that would accomplish much. I’ve grown in power since I’ve known him, but he’s older as well. And he’s more vicious than he’s ever been. One of his henchmen was able to resist when they attacked me initially, so maybe they’ve been training against my powers.”
“Still worth a try, darling.”
There was a loud clack as the door to the room was unlocked. Oscar startled as the sharp metallic noise penetrated his ear drums. When the door swung open, Elliott stood there, a grim expression on his face. Behind him were two other vampires, almost as muscular as he was. The three of them made an intimidating picture.
“Are you ready?” Elliott’s voice was sicky sweet, a parody of affection.
“Ready for what?” Oscar snapped. Just because he was trapped didn’t mean he had to be pleasant.
“Ready to start your life as my mate, of course.” Elliott took a few steps toward him, and Oscar suppressed his instinctual flinch. “In the morning we’ll dock the boat in New Jersey. My vampires have been readying our new covenhouse in Hoboken.”
Rage coursed through Oscar at the vampire ordering him around. He stood and called forth the demon, his vampiric energy filling the room.
“Leave us. Exit the boat and let us go free.”
Everyone there froze, including Lavinia. Their faces went slack, and a tiny nodule of hope burst in Oscar’s chest. After a moment, though, Elliott shook his head like a dog drying itself.
“Nice try. But we’re prepared this time.” A shit-eating grin spread across Elliott’s face. “Didn’t you wonder why you couldn’t contact your British dandy of a coven master? A few friends of mine lit some leaves and waved their hands around and poof! Locked down tight.”
Oscar’s jaw dropped open. What had Elliott done?
“You’ve allied yourself with the witches?! ”
Elliott shrugged and pursed his lips. “I told you, I’m building an empire here. Besides, if I’m going to set up shop in New Jersey, I have to deal with the witches. That’s where they live.”
Oscar shook his head and rubbed his eyes with his right hand. His ex was even stupider than he’d thought. Witches didn’t lend their gifts without exacting a steep price. Generally, vampires avoided them at all costs.
“What did they demand in return?” Oscar asked.
“That’s not your concern. All you need to know is that they set up their shield around the ship, and they’ve been teaching us to resist your mind powers. So, you’ll need something more powerful than your parlor tricks to?—”
Loud footsteps echoed in the small room as Elliott’s two henchmen ran off at a clip, finally overcome by Oscar’s command.
“I guess my ‘parlor tricks’ aren’t totally ineffectual,” Oscar said with a defiant smirk.
Elliott’s eyes went cold, and he puffed up his chest. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be conscious or whole to be my mate.”
Oscar steeled himself as Elliott hissed and lunged at him.