Chapter 20 Ezra
Suggested Listening: Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo
I t feels as though my body has been filled with molten lead. I can’t move, but everything burns. I try to roll, to move, to shift. To do something. But I’m completely immobile. My eyes and mouth glued shut.
My heart begins to race as panic sets in.
Am I dead for real? What the fuck happened?
I have this vague memory of going to Farid’s apartment, and then…
Right. That vamp jumped me. Farid set me up.
That’s what I get for trying to do a favor for someone.
“He can’t. I won’t let him. He can’t! I won’t let him. Do you hear me? I won’t let him!”
Frowning, I lift my head and listen to the raving words of a madman. His voice sounds like a ripped plastic bag, ragged and used past its usefulness.
Where the fuck did they take me?
I wiggle my nose a bit, and focus on that while the madman keeps chanting. Eventually, I get my eyelid to unseal. It takes more effort than I’d like to hoist one eyelid and peer around me.
The orientation is all wrong. Everything is very upright.
It feels like I went to the dentist and got a face full of anesthesia.
I’m not sad about never having to go to the dentist ever again. Vampire teeth are a bit like shark teeth. There’s always a new tooth ready to come in. First time one fell out while I was flossing I lost my shit thinking my body was falling apart. Gracie laughed so hard she nearly pissed herself. Then she apologized and explained that was supposed to be normal.
That was a good night.
I’d been terrified of a second death. So in the middle of the night I rushed over to her place. It was one of the rare nights Puck wasn’t staying with her. She answered the door wearing this nightdress with a thin robe thrown over the top, but that didn’t do anything to hide the way her nipples were poking through.
We sat in her living room and talked most of the night. Not even about vampire or witch shit. Just normal stuff. Like we do now.
Fuck. Am I ever going to see her again?
I manage to pry my other eye open and blink a few times. It doesn’t exactly become easier to hold my eyes open. While I look around me, I try to wiggle my hands, focusing on my index fingers.
Ah. That’s why everything looks strange.
As some feeling returns to my hands, I realize that I’ve been strung up by my wrists. The numbness is likely from all the blood leaving my hands and arms, cutting off feeling. If I were human, being hung up like this would have destroyed my shoulders and likely crippled me for the rest of my life.
I manage to get a good look at what’s around me.
I’m in some sort of large room. The walls look like they’ve been cut from a single sheet of stone. The floor is a metal grate. Below that, someone has run lights, casting them up the walls. There are red, decorative lights thrown in. It’s all very industrial-goth-meets-vampire.
“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t!” the madman chants.
There isn’t much in the way of what I’d call furniture. The place looks empty. And kind of sad. Like a warehouse after a rave. It even smells like piss.
A shadow moves.
No, not a shadow.
It’s the vamp that jumped me.
He stands in the shadow formed by a square, stone column half into the wall. He’s got the leather jacket on, but the swagger has left him. His head and shoulders are hunched, eyes on the floor, hands clasped in front of him.
The guy looks like a scared rabbit, terrified of making a move. And that’s who got the drop on me?
No, Farid did something. If it wasn’t for him, I think I’d have taken care of this guy just fine.
“I won’t allow it. I won’t allow it. I won’t—”
“Will you shut the hell up?” I say.
The incessant chanting stops. Maybe my luck hasn’t run out completely?
The silence is a blessed relief. Only then do I realize how much my head is pounding. And Gracie lives with this kind of thing every damn day? Fucking hell.
Suddenly, fire rips into my side.
I shout as I’m jerked around to stare at what I have to assume is the madman.
At one point, he must have been a big, brawny kind of man. But time and death haven’t been kind to him. His sallow skin sags while his long, greasy hair hangs lank around his face. He’s wearing a thin under shirt with plaid boxers and plastic sandals. Over that, he’s got a gray robe. He looks a lot like knock off version of Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski.
Talk about a movie I shouldn’t have been allowed to see as a kid. Pretty sure that’s where I heard the word vagina for the first time.
“You’re here. You’re here. You’re here!” the madman snarls.
Oh, shit.
It all clicks into place. The raving lunatic is Treznor. My sire. And I am royally fucked.