Chapter 18 – Luna
Chapter Eighteen
Luna
“So, I don’t know if I made this clear earlier, but I really don’t want to be here,” I said aloud, as the vampires around me began to wake up. I’d miscounted prior, there were twelve of them, and there was no place for me to run, trapped like I was in a stupid blood-fueled magical cylinder-thing.
I did stand up, though. All the better to see my oncoming demise, rocking back and forth like I was surfing as the contraption we were in—which I now realized was some kind of cargo truck—drove down city streets. I could feel it pause at stoplights, and then the engine rev as it kept going.
I expected us to hit highway speeds any moment now—Vegas wasn’t that big a city—and was surprised when we did not.
One by one, the waking vampires headed into the same room the girl had left for, at the back of the truck—I realized now the one wall cut the available space in half—and while at first I found that comforting, as the last ones rose up, I started to panic.
My fear of being around strange vampires was outweighed by my fear of being alone and not knowing what the fuck was going on.
“Where are we headed?” I asked quickly. There was no question they were Sangre Rojo; they were all men and dressed the same, in dapper suits, with tightly cropped beards and moustaches.
When none of them answered me, likely because I was a woman, I tried a different tact.
“You know there are people who’ll pay good money for my safe return. ”
The one I assumed was their leader—in addition to a suit, he also had a silver wallet-chain—looked at me. “I doubt that very much, little sacrifice.”
I did not like the sound of that. “First off, fuck you, secondly, what the hell are you talking about?” I made myself as big as I could, which was hard because of my aching ribs.
“You’ve been chosen. You should be pleased.”
“Well, I’m not!” I said, stepping forward, only to get myself painfully repelled off the magical walls. “Chosen for what?”
He didn’t answer me, turning instead to discuss things with another his kind, while the truck we were in slowed and eventually jackknifed through a significant right-hand turn. I heard a squeal of a woman from the other room and started freaking out.
“Hey!” I shouted, beating my hand against the wall to utter silence. “Talk to me! Chosen for what?” I screamed, my volume rising. “Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey!” I started shouting, demanding their attention.
The last of the vampires rose up slowly, dusting his knees before yawning. “How much longer will we have to listen to her?” he asked the only one that’d bothered to speak to me.
“For as long as we perform the ceremony,” he answered his companion with a shrug, before turning to walk after the others.
“Ceremony?” My voice went up to dog whistle levels. I reared back, flinging myself against the walls that contained me. It repelled me so hard I rebounded off of the wall behind me, and slid down it into a crumpled ball, clutching my ribs in agony.
Since I wasn’t going to get any help from anyone currently present, I switched gears.
“Master!” I said, gasping the word in pain, hoping he would answer and come down here and punish all of them, like he so often did me.
“Master—I know you’re awake now, somewhere—please help me!
” I pleaded up to the heavens, wondering why now of all times he wasn’t bothering to watch.
I rocked back into the wall behind me with an unanswered sob, and saw that rather than follow the other vampires into the cordoned off back room, I now had the lead vampire’s glittering attention, framed by the door behind him.
“Yes. Call for him. Keep going,” he encouraged me, and then disappeared, closing and audibly locking the door behind him.