Chapter 2 #2
The cigarette nearly fell out of Crystal’s mouth. “What?”
“A bunch of guys started a new human police force,” Jack said as if that was somehow not a major revelation and, to Crystal’s mind, inherently absurd. “They have headquarters downtown. Making their own uniforms. It’s pretty ragtag so far. But I guess it’s helpful.”
“So vigilantes,” Crystal said.
“Well… they’re calling themselves police,” Jack said, shrugging.
“They have no court system or any human political system to enforce the laws,” Crystal said, feeling like she very nearly knew what she was talking about. “They’re vigilantes.”
“Whatever,” Jack said. “I’m safer because of em’.”
“Really?” That was a shock. She couldn’t even figure out how that worked. But she didn’t have time to play twenty questions. They had two other doctors to deliver to. “Okay well... ”
“Thank you!” Jack said, suddenly appearing in front of her and clasping her hands. “Means a lot.”
“Oh gosh, Jack,” Crystal muttered. “Don’t be genuine. It gives me hives.”
They were already back outside and heading to the next hospital when Crystal realized they’d forgotten one of the small cases of Naloxone. “Oh shit.”
Crystal felt a spike of anxiety and was angry at herself for such a stupid mistake.
Why hadn’t she double-checked, why hadn’t she…
? If she ran now, she thought, and sent Nina and Jet on to the next stop with the cart, she could meet them at the third hospital and they could be back home before nightfall.
But once it was dark… She wasn’t even sure who she was most afraid of. There were so many possibilities. But the Vampyren at night… They got wild. She’d gone this far without getting attacked. She was hoping to break some kind of record.
“I’m gonna run back home,” Crystal said, checking to make sure her taser was stored in the back of her cutoffs and her knife was in her pocket. “You guys go on. I’ll meet you at Doc Friday’s. You know where it is, right?”
“Yeah…” Nina looked panicked and Crystal grit her teeth. They needed to just get this done. The meds would save lives and as much as Crystal didn’t much like to admit it, she cared about that. “Are you sure?”
“Nina!” Crystal snapped, as they stood there on the sidewalk. “It’s fine. The Nalo boxes are light. I’m just gonna run really fast.”
“Okay,” Jet said, looking as terrified as Crystal felt.
He probably was. Somehow the two of them felt so much safer when they were with Crystal.
She couldn’t figure that one. More of their weird codependency, she supposed.
She’d put on some muscle over the last year, but it wasn’t as if she would save anyone from Vampyren anytime soon even if her knife had come in handy on occasion.
Jet was six feet and he was lanky but stronger than he looked.
It was really just his inner nerd that made him feel like he needed Crystal to protect him.
Finally, she managed to get them to agree, and the sun was still mercifully high in the sky as they parted ways. Crystal jogged and focussed on the mission.
Get the drugs, get the drugs, get the drugs…
She was keenly aware of the slightest noise, her nose on red alert, sniffing out any potential danger.
Yet somehow the Vamp managed to take her by surprise.
He was very clean, she thought. It was a strange thing to think when a Vampyren stepped out of the long afternoon shadows and made you fall on your face.
She’d scraped her chin and she hissed, barely registering the hulking figure looming over her but then suddenly thick arms were lifting her right up off the ground and setting her on her feet.
She looked up at him, her heart thudding in her chest. He was one of those pale Vamps and he had a lighter shade of hair than most that glinted like silver. His eyes were nearly white.
What kinda freak, she dimly thought.
“Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood,” the Vamp said, practically licking his chops. His lips were unnaturally red and now she could smell it; the sharp and metallic scent of blood. He’d just eaten. Well, that was good, right? Maybe then he wouldn’t want to eat her.
She’d come across almost-friendly Vamps before. Vamps she could reason with, at any rate. But others…
“You sure are lookin’ good,” he rasped.
That was a song, she thought. Well, and a fairy tale. She wondered how he’d learned either. The Vamps were really acclimated to the culture nowadays. It was off-putting.
“Right.” Crystal nodded curtly and leaped to take off running. But abruptly, a hand was clamping onto the bun on top of her head, unknotting it and dragging her backward by the hair. She screamed bloody murder, and that only seemed to spur him on.
The sidewalk was scraping up her legs as he dragged her back along the pavement to a dark alley and she reached for her taser only to find that it had dropped somewhere along the way. She screamed and kicked and squirmed and spat.
“I’m Drake,” the Vamp said casually as if they were sitting down for a drink. “And I’m about to fuck you right into the ground, little thing.”
“No!” Crystal screamed. “NO!”
Seriously, why couldn’t they ever ask?
It was a funny thought, she considered. Or it would have been. Perhaps in some scenario, it was kind of funny.
Now it was some gross and smelly alley and her kicking the ground as Drake the Vampyren easily dragged her along like she was a sack of potatoes.
He picked her up and spun her around and Crystal fought like a hellcat but there was nothing for it as he shoved her against a brick wall, the immovable force of him holding her head to the wall as he yanked her cutoffs down painfully over her ass.
Fuck fuck fuck…
“Drake!” A cluster of Vampyren appeared at the end of the alley and he looked over. They didn’t seem particularly concerned by the sexual assault in progress. Not that Crystal should have been surprised, she supposed. “Lucian!” One of them hollered.
Seriously?
The prospect of Lucian that weren’t just some invention somehow filled her with more fear than the prospect of rape but now Drake hauled her over his shoulder even as she helplessly squirmed.
“Let go of me, you fuckwad!”
Unsurprisingly, Drake, the brutal Vamp wasn’t listening to her.
Instead, he tossed her inside a metal locker sitting there in the alley.
She screamed as he shut the doors, her attempts to stop him wildly unsuccessful.
The entire interaction had been like a housefly fighting a gorilla.
She’d been so panicked she hadn’t even thought to pull her knife.
The part of her that thought of herself as a leader, a hero, was pretty pissed off about that.
Only, nobody had gotten that far with her before. It had paralyzed her.
Now, locked inside a tiny, pitch-black space, where she was likely to die, she burst into tears.
She had been helpless, and she had let him win.
It was stupid to blame herself yet shame overwhelmed her.
She screamed and sobbed and pounded on the doors and attempted to rock the locker and push it over.
What good that would do, she had no idea.
At least it was something she was doing.
But the fucking thing was far too heavy and instead, she ended up huddled in a tiny ball inside the locker, crying into her kneecaps, hot tears sliding down her legs.
She didn’t know how long she was trapped in there.
It was long enough that the last of the afternoon heat beating down on the metal locker baked her so that sweat was saturating her body.
She would die in here. That much was certain.
She just hoped she passed out from a lack of oxygen before the heat killed her.
But time passed by in insufferable minutes.
She found herself screaming herself hoarse when she thought she heard a noise outside, not even aware she was doing it.
By the time she heard footsteps outside, she was too hysterical to think coherently. She worked herself up into a frenzy, feeling Drake’s hands on her, his rough palms shoving her head against the brick wall.
She passed out as the doors opened.