Chapter 18
I sleep fitfully that night. Maybe it’s because Ares tucked me into bed, locked all the doors, double checked the security cameras, loaded the gun he’d given me when we first met, placing it on the nightstand, and then left to go searching for the records. Maybe it’s the fact that I know my best friend has been sold to a vampire. But I sleep some of the worst sleep of my life.
When the sun rises in the morning, Ares has not returned. I check my phone to find a message from him letting me know he is still searching and that he thinks he will be out all day.
I feel numb as I climb out of bed. I kind of feel like my head is in a fog. Maybe this is my brain’s way of protecting itself. The human mind can only take so much.
So, I shut it off. I head into our home gym. I run on the treadmill until my legs nearly buckle beneath me. I hit the weights and max myself out to where I can barely wipe my hair from my face. Which is a mistake. I have classes to teach tonight. But I don’t care. I need to do something, and this is something I can do right now.
The chef shows up just after I finish punishing my body. She makes me the most amazing lunch I’ve ever had and then prepares a dozen or so meals to be put in the fridge for later. As she wraps up, I head into the shower for a quick rinse off before I need to leave for work.
I brush my hair back into a slicked back pony and change into my preferred workout clothes. I text Billings that I need to head to work in a few minutes. He immediately replies that he will be outside in just a minute.
I’m heading into work, I text Ares. Anything yet?
His response comes through almost immediately. Not yet. I’ve gone through his main office, but I know he has other places he keeps work stuff. I’ve got a few more places in mind to look.
I like the message and slip my phone into my pocket. My keys jingle as I lock our apartment, and then the elevator takes me back to ground level. Billings is indeed waiting at the curb when I walk out the doors.
“Thanks,” I tell him as I climb in the back seat. “This should start being my regular schedule, so I hope that helps you know what to expect.”
“It’s not a problem, Miss Kincade,” he says as he puts on his turn signal and merges into traffic.
I stare out the window as we drive. Eighteen months ago, I was teaching one of my classes, and a new face walked in. Ophelia looked so damn determined. And she showed it as she did everything I instructed. She was tiny, and that was always going to make it more challenging. But I knew what that was like .
I’d invited her out for dinner after that first class. And then we talked after the next class.
Ophelia became my most regular student.
Soon, we were hanging out regularly throughout the week.
And finally, she shared her story with me.
Ophelia had grown up in Chicago. Her home life hadn’t been great, it even started out bad considering her Mom used the whole time she was pregnant with Ophelia. Then her mom died when she was little, and her dad was a mostly absent drunk who hardly realized he was a parent. Ophelia had her grandmother for a while, until she died as well. Ophelia had two older siblings, a brother who OD’d when she was in middle school and a sister who went missing just after Ophelia graduated high school. Ophelia speculated the sister had also been lost to drugs and just hadn’t been found. She had no love lost toward her family.
She’d moved to New York after she became a paralegal. She really wanted to be a lawyer, and she would have been a damn good one, she was one of the most pursuasive people I knew, but she didn’t have the money to pay for law school. Still, she swore up and down that she would never live life like she had as a kid, and she’d provide for herself, so it wouldn’t get to that.
My best friend’s life was so hot and cold. In so many ways, she’d been wronged. And in others, she talked her way into a better life. She should have been underqualified for her job, but she got it. She had an insanely good deal on her apartment, because she’d sweet talked the landlord. She’d sweet talked her way out of any charges when she got in a yelling match with a police officer about her rights.
I’d almost say she had a way with people. But not always.
Ophelia started dating once she arrived in the city. Just casual, nothing serious. But one night, she went out with a guy who gave her a bad feeling. And by the end of the night, he tried forcing himself on her.
Ophelia had fought back.
But she didn’t win.
For some, being sexually assaulted defines them for a while. And I place no blame on those. It’s an awful, evil thing to do to another human being.
But it just made Ophelia angry. Determined.
Ophelia always joked that when she found the man who did that to her, she was going to kill him. She’d said it as a joke, but there was always something in me that believed that if she ever got the opportunity, she would.
Her experiences made her a hard and bitter person.
She’d never be helpless against someone again.
And that was how she walked into my class. And she might have been hard and bitter, but she was also the most loyal person I’d ever met, and we loved each other fiercely.
A single tear slips down my face as I think about where she ended up. Helpless. Because even though she trained, even though she could handle herself now, she was up against a vampire, and no human is going to beat a vampire singlehandedly.
Her body is being used against her will yet again.
Fuck Augustus, I think to myself. I curse him in every way I can think of.
I wipe at my face as I realize we’re nearly there. I straighten in my seat. I have to pull it together. I can’t let my coworkers see me like this, and certainly not my students.
Billings slows as he drives in front of the building, but there is nowhere at the curb to pull over. He creeps forward and turns right down the block to find somewhere else. But the street is packed.
“It’s fine, Billings, I’ll just hop out here,” I say as I unclick my seatbelt.
“Alright, see you in a few hours,” he says with a nod.
I push the door open and wave at the oncoming car as I slam my door closed and cross the street. With focused intent, I head down the sidewalk back toward the gym.
We’ll be going over incapacitating moves today. In my head, I run through the agenda—all the grabs, all the strikes, everything a woman needs to know to take down her attacker. With the right moves, a woman can take down a man twice her?—
A hand wraps around my face, covering my mouth. I’m yanked backward roughly, and I trip. But strong hands grip me painfully around the arm, even as something sharp pricks me in the side of the neck.
Before I can use any of those incapacitating moves I was just practicing in my head, the world spins and tilts. My legs feel liquid. Suddenly, my whole body is rising, and I realize a set of arms is beneath my back and under my knees.
The world grows darker, and the last thing I see is the ceiling of an SUV before the darkness swallows me whole.