Chapter 5 Miranda
MIRANDA
Consciousness returns in jagged, uneven fragments.
First, the smell. It’s aggressive—a thick, heavy blend of cedar, raw iron, and wet dog. It doesn't smell like the sterile, preserved air of Belle Rêve. It smells alive. It smells like dirt and testosterone.
I blink, my eyelids feeling like they’ve been glued shut with industrial adhesive. The ceiling above me is raw timber, unvarnished and dark with age.
Calibration check.
I’m horizontal. I’m warm. Too warm. I’m buried under a mountain of heavy furs that feel coarse against my skin.
Dream sequence, my brain suggests. You’re back in the Chicago apartment, the radiator is broken, and you dreamed up a gothic nightmare about vampires to process the stress of the inheritance.
That makes sense. Vampires are a biological impossibility. Physics doesn't allow for mass to move that fast without generating a sonic boom. The laws of thermodynamics prohibit a dead body from speaking. It was a hallucination brought on by stress and bad shrimp cocktail.
I try to sit up to verify the hypothesis.
Pain—sharp, white-hot, and structural—shoots up my right leg.
I gasp, falling back against the pillow. The air hisses through my teeth.
"Okay," I wheeze. "Pain confirmed. Not a dream."
I throw the heavy furs off. My clothes are gone. I’m wearing a t-shirt that is three sizes too big for me, smelling of that same cedar-musk, and a pair of grey sweatpants rolled up at the waist.
I look at my right ankle. It’s propped up on a pillow, slightly swollen with a faint violet bruising forming along the bone.
Grade one sprain. I rotate it gingerly. It’s stiff, but the structural integrity is intact.
No fractures. The suspension is shot, and it’s going to grind like a rusted bearing if I put weight on it, but it’s still functional. I can walk but it will hurt.
Status Report: Injured. Disoriented. Location unknown. Hostile territory.
I force myself to sit up again, ignoring the throbbing in my leg. The room is small, built of rough-hewn logs. It’s functional, sparse. A wood stove in the corner radiates heat. A table with one chair. No porcelain dolls. No velvet.
I look toward the light source. A single window, framed by mosquito netting, overlooks a porch. Beyond that, a wall of white fog.
Movement catches my eye.
I lean forward, the mainspring of my anxiety winding tighter with every second.
There is a man outside.
He’s standing in the mud, waist-deep in the fog, splitting wood.
My breath hitches. Not from fear—though I should be terrified—but from the sheer, kinetic impact of looking at him.
He is massive. Not gym-rat bulky, but functional, labor-built massive.
He’s shirtless despite the damp chill, his skin slick with sweat that gleams in the diffuse morning light.
Every time he swings the axe, the muscles in his back shift like tectonic plates, sliding under bronze skin marked by old, silver-white scars.
He raises the axe. His deltoids bunch, corded and hard. He brings it down. Thwack. The log splits with terrifying ease.
He turns to grab another piece of timber, and I get a look at his face.
It’s a face that doesn't belong in a civilized society. It belongs on a warning label. A heavy, square jaw buried under dark scruff that looks like he trims it with a knife. A nose that’s been broken at least once, slightly crooked.
His hair is dark, shaggy, falling into eyes I can't quite see from this distance, but I can feel the intensity of them even through the glass.
He looks violent. He looks capable. And god help me, my traitorous, illogical brain registers attractive before it registers kidnapper.
"Focus, Miranda," I hiss, slapping my own cheek. "The chassis is pretty, but the engine might be homicidal."
I need a weapon.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The room spins—vertigo from the crash, likely a mild concussion—but I grit my teeth and force the world to stabilize. I stand on my good leg, using the wall for support.
I scan the room. No phone. No keys.
On a shelf near the door, sitting next to a jar of nails, is a heavy pipe wrench. Cast iron. eighteen inches. Perfect leverage.
I hop-limp toward it. My ankle’s a bit painful if I put pressure on, but I ignore it. Survival overrides maintenance.
I grab the wrench. The cold metal is grounding. It feels real.
I hear a heavy thud on the porch steps. Then another. The wood groans under significant weight.
He’s coming.
I back into the corner, putting the bed between me and the door. I raise the wrench, my grip white-knuckled.
The doorknob turns. It doesn't rattle; it just turns with a heavy, decisive click.
The door swings open.
He has to duck to get through the frame.
If he looked big from the window, he looks like a geological event in the room. He sucks all the oxygen out of the space. He’s carrying an armful of firewood, his chest heaving slightly from the exertion. Up close, the scent is overwhelming—ozone, rain, and the copper tang of something wild.
He kicks the door shut with his heel. He sees me instantly.
He sees the wrench.
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't drop the wood. He just looks at the makeshift weapon, then up at my face, his expression bored.
His eyes are amber. Not brown. Amber. Gold, glowing, and eerie.
"Put it down," he says. His voice is a low rumble, a subwoofer vibrating in the floorboards. "Unless you plan on fixing the plumbing."
"Stay back," I warn, though my voice lacks the authority I want. It sounds thin. "I know how to use torque. I will break your kneecaps."
He snorts—a dismissive, rough sound—and walks past me like I’m a piece of furniture. He dumps the wood next to the stove with a crash that makes me jump.
"You can't even stand up, chérie," he drawls, the accent thick and rolling, skipping over consonants like stones on water. "You ain't breaking nothing but your other ankle."
He turns to a small icebox in the corner. He rummages around, the muscles in his back flexing as he bends.
"Who are you?" I demand, shifting my grip on the wrench. "Where am I? And don't tell me I'm safe, because the last time I was in a house in this zip code, the dinner guests tried to eat me."
He straightens up, holding a bag of frozen peas.
"You ain't safe," he says flatly. He turns and tosses the bag at me.
My reflexes kick in. I catch it with my free hand. It’s freezing cold.
"You're in the swamp," he says, leaning back against the counter, crossing his arms over that massive, scarred chest. "My swamp. And you're lucky I didn't leave you in the ditch for the gators."
"Lucky?" I laugh, a sharp, hysterical sound. "I was run off the road by monsters. Literal monsters. And then I wake up here, with a giant lumberjack who thinks kidnapping is a hospitality service."
"I didn't kidnap you," he says, his eyes narrowing. "I fished you out of a sinking car. You were drowning."
"And the clothes?" I gesture to the oversized shirt. "Did the swamp fairies change me?"
"You were wet. You were freezing. Hypothermia kills faster than bleeding out." He shrugs, unbothered. "I stripped you. Dried you. Put you in the bed. Don't flatter yourself, darlin'. I didn't enjoy it."
My face heats up. The thought of those large, rough hands stripping my wet dress off... I shove the image into the incinerator of my mind.
"Okay," I say, trying to recalibrate. "Thank you for the rescue. Now, I need a phone. I need to call the police. I need to report the... the people at the estate."
He laughs then. It’s a dark, humorless sound. "The Sheriff? You gonna call the Sheriff on the Duvals?"
"Yes. They attacked me. They had... teeth." I struggle with the word. "They aren't human."
"No shit," he says. "They're vampires."
He says it so casually. Like he’s saying they’re Democrats or they’re Methodists.
"Vampires," I repeat. "So it’s real. The biological impossibility. The violation of conservation of energy."
"You talk weird," he mutters. "Yes. Vampires. Leeches. Bloodsuckers. And you smell just like 'em."
"I smell like them?" I bristle. "I smell like swamp water and... whatever this is." I pull at the shirt. "Cedar?"
"You smell like the Crypt," he says, his nose flaring slightly. "Like dead flowers and rot. It’s all over you."
"Well, I'm sorry I didn't have time to shower after fleeing for my life," I snap. "And for the record, I am not one of them. I’m a clock restorer. I fix gears. I don't drink blood."
"Could've fooled me," he says, pushing off the counter. He takes a step toward me.
I raise the wrench again. "Don't."
He stops, but he’s close enough now that I can sense the heat radiating off him. He’s burning hot, like a furnace. He looks down at me, his golden eyes tracking over my face, lingering on my mouth, then snapping to my birthmark.
His jaw tightens. A muscle feathers under the scruff.
"You got an attitude for someone barely standing," he says softly.
"And you have a terrible bedside manner for a Good Samaritan," I counter. "You look like a god, but you talk like a caveman."
The words slip out before I can filter them.
His eyebrows shoot up. "A god?"
I flush, feeling the heat rise from my neck to my hairline. "A figure of speech. You’re objectively... symmetrical. Large. Whatever. Don't let it go to your head. Your personality ruins the aesthetic."
He stares at me for a long second. The corner of his mouth twitches, almost a smirk, but he kills it before it can fully form.
"Sit down," he commands, pointing to the bed. "Put the ice on the ankle."
"I'm leaving," I say, stubbornness fusing my spine. "I’m walking out that door."
"You can't walk far," he points out. "And even if you could, the Truce line is five miles that way." He points vaguely into the fog. "Between here and there is nothing but mud, gators, and about fifty Duval vampires waiting for you to stick your head out so they can finish what they started."
"Why would they wait?" I ask. "If they want me, why don't they just come here?"
"Because they can't," he says. "Not while I'm breathing."
"Are you..." I hesitate, looking at his eyes again. The gold. The impossible size. "Are you one of them?"
His expression darkens instantly. The air moving through the room grows heavy, charged with static. He steps into my personal space, looming over me, a wall of scarred muscle and aggression.
"Don't you ever," he growls, his voice dropping an octave, "compare me to a Leech."
He reaches past me. I flinch, thinking he’s going to grab me, but his hand goes to the door.
He turns the deadbolt. Click. Then he slides a heavy iron bar across the frame. Thud.
He turns back to me, his amber eyes glowing in the dim light.
"You stay put," he says. "You don't leave until the scent is gone, Leech."
"Stop calling me that!" I shout at his back as he walks toward a trapdoor in the floor. "My name is Miranda!"
He doesn't answer. He just disappears into the cellar, leaving me locked in a cabin with a wrench, a bag of melting peas, and a growing suspicion that I’ve traded a quick death for a slow, confusing one.