Chapter 7: Lost and Found
Stella:
I was stirred awake by an awful shriek. He brought another girl home tonight. She was bound with rope at the center of a ring of candles. Her eyes were wide with fear. She struggled against her restraints, but to no avail. She couldn't get free.
The Vampire walked out of a darkened corner, holding his hunting knife. I was a bit confused by how he was dressed. He was wearing a pen striped tux, his hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
"What are you doing?!" I asked, my voice a harsh croak.
He didn't say anything. He just smiled at me as he stepped into the ring of fire. He crouched down beside the girl. He covered her eyes with one hand and quickly drew the blade of the knife across her throat. A horrible gurgling sound echoed through the room. I watched in horror as he drank his fill of the girl's blood and filled two wine glasses to their brims.
He stood and placed the two wine glasses and knife on a table.
"Why?" I asked, tears streaking down my face. The salty tears stung the scratches on my face. I couldn't believe I'd just seen someone die.
"I needed a snack before the ceremony. If I'm too hungry, I'll kill you." He replied with a shrug. "Besides, you'll need a drink afterwards."
If there was anything in my belly I would've puked.
He walked back into the shadows and returned with a white lacy dress a few moments later. I tuned my face away and squeezed my eyes shut as he dressed me in the wedding dress. I tried to picture myself somewhere else, but it was hard. My mind kept reminding me of the fear I'd seen in the girl's eyes as she died.
"Now let's get those chains off and we can begin." The Vampire said, after I was all dressed. His hands slipped up my arms to where the chain wrapped around my wrists.
A loud knocking sound made the Vampire jump with a snarl. "Damn it!" He hissed.
"I'll be right back." He said and rushed up the ladder. The trapdoor came down again with a bang. I was left alone in the dark with the girl's corpse. I averted her dead gaze and looked down, where my toes just grazed floor.
Wild:
After leaving Stella's house I went just down the street to the home of the rogue in question, Ezra Shade. I knocked on the door a few times and about five minutes later, the door opened a little, just enough that I could see the eyes of a clearly deranged vampire, hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, studying me.
"You!" Shade gasped. He tore his sunglasses off to reveal the wild look in his eyes.
"You know me?" I asked, taking off my own shades.
"I-I remember you…back at my last trial…you wanted the council to destroy me." He stuttered. His voice was timid, but his eyes flared a brighter red.
"That would be me." I confirmed. I didn't recognize the name, but now that I saw his face and heard his voice, my memory was jogged.
It was about two years ago. He'd killed a young girl at a safe house. She'd volunteered to be fed upon, but he'd taken it too far. He'd claimed that it was all a terrible accident. That it'd been a while since he'd fed and that he'd gotten carried away. That was understandable, accidents like that happened all the time, but my gut told me that he was lying. He'd done it on purpose. His docile demeanor and charming voice fooled the council, but I knew better. The lucky bastard got off with a warning. I knew they'd just let a real threat go with just a slap on the wrist.
I got a sickening feeling in my stomach as I looked at him. My gut was screaming at me again. His smell was the same as the one that saturated the girl's room. I knew he was involved. However, I couldn't let him know I was on to him.
"May I come in, Mr. Shade? I need to ask you a few questions."
He eyed me suspiciously. "About what?"
"A girl who lives just down the street from you has gone missing. I just need to make sure that you didn't have anything to do with her disappearance."
He paused a moment then finally allowed me to enter. I looked around the dingy room. He wasn't the best house keeper. The house reeked of decay.
"What's that smell?" I asked.
"I butcher my own food. There's some meat in the freezers. And there's some meat hanging up in the basement." He explained with a strange gleam in his eyes.
I did think it was a bit odd that he had multiple freezers, but then again some older vampires can be a bit eccentric. Some like to keep themselves heavily stocked so that they can suppress the urge to go hunting. I still wasn't buying it though.
"Are you going somewhere?" I asked, noticing the nice tux he was wearing.
"I have a wedding to get to, so lets make this quick, if you don't mind, officer." He huffed.
"I won't keep you long, sir. Did you know Stella Rossi, the missing girl?" I asked.
His eyes shifted to the side and he stuffed his hands in his pockets. Though he tried to avoid my gaze, I saw the far away look in their crimson depths. "I knew of her. She'd walk past here on her way to school. When I was moving in, she helped me carry some boxes in from my truck. She was really nice. Pretty too."
"Sounds like you had a thing for her." I implied.
He shot me an odd look and his lips pulled into a smirk. "Yea. I was crazy about her. Couldn't get her out of my head. Barely ate for weeks. I wanted to ask her out, but I was too afraid to. She being human and all. Have you ever fallen in love with a human before, Agent Wilder?" He asked.
I was caught off my guard by his question. "Not since my turning." I replied.
"Pray you never do. The smell of their blood is even more intoxicating. It gets under your skin, messes with your mind, makes you do things you normally wouldn't. Crazy things. Not even a goodie-two-shoes like you could resist."
Okay. He was really starting to weird me out. "What do you mean? What did you do?" I asked. Was he going to confess?
"I broke into her house, watched her, stole some of her clothes, sent her letters and things. I'm sure you've already checked out her house and caught my scent all over the place." His smirk stretched wider. "I admit I stalked her a bit, but that was it."
My eyes narrowed slightly. "You sure that things didn't get out of hand again? I know you were stalking her. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think you did something else to her."
He looked at me like he was offended by my assumption. "I love Stella. I'd never hurt her. You're just wasting your time here."
"Right." I scoffed, "Then you won't mind me searching the place will you Mr. Shade?"
He smiled his fake charming smile at me. "Of course not. I have nothing to hide."
"Good." I took out my specially made cuffs and he aloud me to cuff him to one of his heavy duty freezers.
I left Shade in the living room and made my way through the dilapidated old building. I could definitely smell the decay of animals throughout the house, but I also smelled the unmistakable aroma of freshly shed human blood. I checked every freezer I could find. It was ridiculous how many he had. There was at least one in every room, except the bath room, and I had the sneaking suspicion that was because it was too small to hold one. Every freezer held body upon body of animals: dogs, cats, rats, deer, pigs, you name it, it was in there.
As I entered the bedroom, I was once again disappointed. Nothing was out of the ordinary…for a vampire's bedroom at least. The windows were boarded up. The room was even more gloomy than the rest of the house. Still the smell of human blood wafted up my nose, taunting all my senses. My stomach growled eagerly. The pain of thirst scratched at the back of my throat, like a tiger desperately trying to escape from his cage. There was no doubting it. Somewhere in this house someone was bleeding. But where? There was nowhere left to look. I went around the bed to check the closet. As my foot came down on an old rug, there was a loud creak. It perked my interest. I pulled back the rug and uncovered a door. I threw it open and the smell of death pounded against my face.
"Thought you could pull a fast one on me, aye Shade?" I wondered aloud. I took a quick look around then climbed down the ladder into the secret room.
I let out a gasp at what I found. The room was dimly lit by a ring of flickering candles. At the center of the ring was a dead girl. She was young. Roughly between fourteen and sixteen years of age. She was blond and she was too young to be the girl I was looking for. As I edged closer to the gruesome scene, a soft melodic sound perked my ears.
"Now I lay you down to sleep. Pray the Lord your soul to keep. If you should die before you wake, pray the Lord your soul to take." The weak female voice sang in a tone drenching with despair.
As I drew nearer, the form of a young woman in a white dress slowly came into focus. My eyes widened in shock. I recognized her face, as drawn and screwed up with pain as it was. It was Stella Rossi! She was alive!
"My god!" I gasped. I'd never seen a vampire do something as cruel and vindictive as this. He had her hanging by a heavy chain from the basement ceiling, like a piece of beef. Her arms were grotesquely contorted, obviously dislocated. They'd turned a bluish black color. Despite her damaged arms, he still had her dangling above the floor. Her toes barely grazed it. All her weight now pulled at her arms. Aside from the dislocated arms, she was also covered in teeth marks, scratches, and bruises. The sight of her made me hurt.
I hurried over to her. " Stella! Stella can you hear me?" I asked her, gently patting her face. Her eyes, glassed over with pain, would not focus on me. She kept staring towards the other girl's body and whispering the twisted bedtime prayer, madly.
Looking at her swollen wrists and mutilated arms, I realized that simply unfastening the chains would be devastatingly painful for her. Good thing I'm a Sleeper type vampire. "Stella, I'm going to put you to sleep now." I told her. I inhaled a gulp of breath. I held it in my chest a moment, allowing it to mix with the sleeper toxin that my body naturally produces. Finally, I pressed my lips to hers and passed the poisonous mist into her . She took in the toxin in shallow breaths. Within moments, her head rolled to the side and her body with limp.
Stella now sleeping peacefully, I reached up and snapped the chains that bound her wrists. Her body fell free of the chains and I caught her in my arms.
I threw her over my shoulder and flew up the ladder to the upper floor. I could feel the burn of thirst intensify with my rage. He'd gotten away last time, but this time, I'd make sure he burned…personally.
I rushed back to the living room, my mind whirling with so much anger, I could hardly see straight. This could all have been avoided. I knew from the first moment I laid eyes on Ezra Shade that he was the type of vampire that killed not because he couldn't control his blood lust, but because he delighted in the actual killing. If the council had listened to me, lives could have been spared. I would not allow them to make the same mistake again.
"Shade!" I yelled, as I stormed into the room. However, I found the room completely empty. The hand cuffs dangled from the freezer's latch, void of the prisoner they once held. The locks on the cuffs had not been broken. A rumbling hiss drew my attention to an open window. Perched in a half crouch, was a misty shadowed form of a man. "Shit!" I growled. He's a Shadow Shifter!
I whipped my gun out and fired a couple of rounds at Shade's shadow form. The solar rounds passed harmlessly through him and he jumped through the window and vanished in a puff of thick smoke. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" I cursed over and over again. "Idiot!" I yelled at myself. How could I have been so careless?
Taking a deep breath to calm my fried nerves, I laid Stella on the couch, holstered my gun, and pulled out my cell phone. I called Chief to let him know what was going on.
"I got Stella Rossi. She's alive, but there was another casualty. A kid. And ugh…Shade…got away." I pulled the phone away from my ear so it wouldn't have to endure the loud yelling.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know he was a Shadow Shifter. He got out of my cuffs." I paused as he barked my orders. "Yea…I'll wait here for back up…sorry Chief." I said, then closed my cell phone and placed it back in my jacket. I sat on the couch next to Stella and leaned my head back against the head rest. What a crappy day…At least Stella was safe…for now. I glanced over at her sleeping face. "I'm sorry that I let you down. I promise I won't rest until that creep burns for what he's done. I give you my word."
Author's Note: Sorry this took me so long guys! I didn't mean to leave you hanging. Hopefully, I'll be able to get Chapter 8 up for you soon. In chapter 8 we'll be exploring the different types of vampires and we'll meet some more characters. Please don't forget to review. A real quick one will do. I just want to hear what you think. Thank you to everyone who has supported me this far. :)