15. The Truth About Haley
She was handcuffed and dragged into a car. They arrived at the mansion, where cranes and bulldozers had excavated and begun restoration of the burned parts. They dragged her ungently up the stairs and into a room, where she was handcuffed to a chair by two handcuffs. She almost smiled. They had no idea what she was now.
An hour or two later, Haley came in. Alexis leaned forward. "Haley! I missed you so much! I'm here to rescue you and your girls. Where are they being held?"
"Rescue me?" she laughed and Alexis smiled. She had no idea.
Haley walked over and slapped her hard across the face. "I don't want to be rescued, you bitch. And you burnt my house!"
Alexis gaped. What had come over her sister?
She shook her head, laughing slightly. "My girls? They're dead, Alexis. Carlos didn't want girls, and neither did Dad. There's no point in having useless brats lying around."
Alexis felt like someone had thrown her into icewater. "What?"
"You've always followed me around like a little kid. Everyone loved you. You were so obedient. Never tried drugs, never snuck out at night, never did anything you weren't told to do first. And you were prettier than me, too. When Carlos picked you over me, I hated you. The worst part was that you didn't even want him. You had no idea what you had." She picked Alexis's hair up and dropped it.
"And now, you're doing it again. You're the pretty one again, and still so sweet and obedient. Who would have thought you would come right back here like this? And at such a terrible time. We're under attack by vampires, Alexis. That must terrify you." She picked up a pair of scissors, unaware that by tomorrow morning, Alexis's hair would be back to exactly the way it was now.
Alexis felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Her sister was no captive. And she had killed her own newborn babies because some man didn't want them. There was submissiveness, and then there was... whatever Haley had become. Or maybe had always been.
As if she knew her thoughts, Haley said, "I hated you so much. When Dad said you were up here, he told me to stay away. But I was never the obedient one when it wasn't in my own best interests, that was always you." She came around in front of Alexis. "I hate you. I tried to kill you several times. I pushed you off of the bannister when we were five. That car accident with Mormor when we were seventeen? No accident. I tried to take you both out at the same time. With you dead and Mom dying, I would have had everything."
She hefted the scissors. "When Carlos sees you with no hair, Alexis, he isn't going to want you. Dad will have to wait and see if I can produce boys." Her smile was nothing short of malicious. "I would kill you now, except that they'd probably beat me for that. Carlos might even kill me. He loves me, but he has a real temper."
"He only loves you because you're pretty. But you've put on some pounds since you killed your babies, Haley. How many did you kill, anyway?"
She shrugged, "Three. Twins, the first ones. I only killed one of them at first, but then I realized I didn't know which one would be like you, so I killed them both, just to make sure."
"You're insane," Alexis said, her heart breaking. "Mormor said that you had run off to get married. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better, but she knew."
"Grany was an old bitch who stunk of old lady perfume and still tried to give me fucking cookies and milk when I was eighteen fucking years old. I'm glad the old cunt is dead. She loved you better than me, too."
"You treated her like she wasn't even a person. She kept trying, anyway," Alexis said. "I never realized that you weren't just airheaded, but you are actively malicious."
"Yeah, yeah. Fuck you. All of your straight As and your college degrees couldn't get you Carlos once he saw how ugly you had become. He wanted me, Alexis. And he's going to want me again. And once he sees how ugly you are, he's going to kill you."
Within her, the vampire rose like a phoenix. Alexis ripped the cuffs casually off of the chair, snapping it easily. Fury boiled up in an oceanic froth and she laughed as Haley realized too late her peril. She dodged for the door, and Alexis was there in front of her.
Alexis felt something she hadn't felt before. She experienced for the first time the very real vampiric desire to kill. But she was a thinking person and she had once loved this woman. Which made the betrayal that much worse, and it made it that much more wicked that she had murdered Alexis's nieces.
Alexis grasped Haley by the hair and flitted out of the house, ignoring the stunned stares of the men she flitted past. Haley screamed and shrieked and Alexis found that she didn't care. Her mind was consumed by the image of Haley snuffing the life out of three infants. She flitted across the lawn, then circled back around until she entered the staging area where Eric stood with Pam, talking to the leader of the mercenary group.
Eric lifted his eyebrow. "That's quite the rescue," he said, his voice droll.
"She did not need rescuing," Alexis told him. "She killed my nieces as they were born. I am going to kill her, but I..."
She held the struggling Haley by the hair at arm's length. Still young, she breathed heavily, trying to get the deep breathing technique to still and calm her. "I want her to suffer, Eric." Her fangs were out and she knew she was acting like the baby the pair thought she was. "She tried to kill Mormor."
"Come with me," Eric said. "Bring her." He gave Pam a significant look, and they led her behind a small trailer. She dragged the struggling Haley behind her.
Pam yanked Haley out of Alexis's hand, and Alexis bristled. She pushed the other woman hard, so that she stumbled. Turning to Alexis, she said, "Your first lesson in hunting, Alexis. Always let your prey have a head start."
Alexis's eyes turned to Eric. He had given her a head start, too. He smiled that boyish smile at her. Then he turned and looked after Haley, who was running for the woods. "Lesson two, let her think she's going to make it."
"Lesson three," Pam said. "Turn her around and make her go the other way and let her think she's going to make it again." She flitted in front of Haley, her fangs snapping out. She hissed, and Haley screamed and ran the other way.
They watched her run the other direction, and Alexis was surprised to find that she felt no pity at all for the sobbing Haley. She had loved her so long and refused to see her true nature. She had loved her and in return she had tried to kill her and tried to kill her beloved Mormor. She could find no pity inside herself at all.
"Always," Eric said, flitting over to stop Haley with his fangs out and a wicked look on his face, "play with your food. It makes them taste better." He flitted back behind Alexis. "Can you smell her terror?"
Alexis lifted her face and let the current of the breeze play over it. He was right. She smelled terror. She wasn't sure how she knew that was it, but she smelled it, as sweet as a fragrant rose once was to her. "Yessss," she hissed, her lids heavy with the heady, intoxicating scent.
He was pressed against her back, his hand splayed across her belly. "That is what made you so irresistible."
"The fear is gone now," she told him. "I can look at you without it."
"Yes," he said low in her ear while Pam turned Haley again. His hand ran up her body to her ribs and pulled her back against him. "I suspected as much. But you're still sweet," he said, his head moving her hair aside as he nipped at her neck with his fangs.
He walked up to Haley, who was now going almost in circles. Turning to look at Alexis, he said, "Are you not hungry? I think she's well done."
Alexis flitted over beside him, and the three of them descended on Haley. Alexis forgot she had even been her sister in the overwhelming sensuality of the experience of drinking together with Eric and her Maker. When they were done, Eric showed her how to hide the body while Pam went to clean herself up.
"We are not done for tonight," Pam reminded her when she got back to the encampment, where the men and women there acted completely as if they hadn't heard screams for the last two hours while Eric, Pam, and Alexis 'played' with their food.
"We have superior numbers and firepower," Eric said. "But we will not underestimate them. They have the home field advantage as well as desperation. And from my research into his activities, your father is a strong strategist."
"I'm dead," Alexis said. "I don't choose to claim him as my father anymore."
Eric gave her an odd look.
"What?"
He shook his head. "Pam's rubbing off on you." Then he said, "You make a better vampire than I expected."
"Sorry to hear it," Alexis said. "I'll try to curb my lusts."
He grinned at her. "I sure hope not."
Then he flitted away to speak to the mercenary leader again, whose name was, so far as she could tell, "Epping." They left and she stood trying to find some sense of remorse. There was sadness. There was a deep feeling of betrayal. Confusion. Even fear and uncertainty.
But she could not dredge up remorse. Her Mormor's face and nameless, faceless babies rose before her and killed all regret before it could be born within her.
"Second thoughts?" Pam asked.
"I expected them," Alexis told her. "But surprisingly, I can't regret it." She looked at Pam. "Why is it easier to trust you than my own family?"
Pam chuckled. "I'm your Maker. You can't help yourself."
"I don't feel that much different. Except that I don't think I would have wanted to kill her before." She shifted as Epping called out orders. "I think I want to kill Carlos, as well. He helped her and supported her killing those babies."
"Babies terrify me," Pam admitted. At Alexis's look, she said, "Oh honey, even I wouldn't eat them. I can't get past the smell."
She walked away and Alexis grinned. She liked Pam, and it didn't really matter to her if it was because Pam was likeable in spite of the hard surface she cultivated, or if it was because Pam was her Maker. Alexis looked over to find Eric watching her, his face completely without expression as he gave Epping orders.
He looked away, and Alexis followed in Pam's wake to move toward the front lines.
"This is going to be dangerous, even for us," Eric whispered in her ear a moment later. This time, she had heard him coming. "I want you to be careful. Don't take risks. You're still a newborn, so your impulse control is not developed."
She sighed, surprised she had to activate her lungs in order to do so. Apparently her automatic functions had ceased and since she wasn't focused on doing so, she wasn't breathing. She tried to set aside her curiosity about the fact and turned to him.
"It's moments like this that almost trick me into thinking you actually care, Eric."
His expression didn't change, he remained still, staring at her with a brooding, closed look on his face. "You are my Progeny's Progeny. I have to care."
"Well, that makes it so much easier for you, doesn't it."
"We don't have to fight, Alexis."
"Is that what we're doing? It's my first fight, sorry I'm not better at it." She walked away from him to climb into her designated vehicle for the drive to the mansion. By the time the night was through, it would be utterly destroyed, she suspected.
She crossed her arms. Too bad Haley wouldn't be there to see it. She winced at the thought, but comforted herself with the knowledge that Haley was a baby-killer and had tried to kill Mormor. But she found that the part of it all that bothered her the most was that she had always thought Haley was just... precocious.
She didn't really understand how Haley had become the monster she had. She had never truly suspected. Just as she hadn't thought that Mormor would betray her by giving half of her inheritance to a vampire—particularly the priceless antiques that had been in their family for generations.
And she had believed that Eric cared. She had thought he meant to protect her and that what he did wasn't meant to harm so much as to wake her up to the realities of life.
She was zero for three, if she didn't include her high school crush on the biggest asshole of the school, the time she accepted a date from a coworker who told everyone the next day that he had 'nailed' her, or the... She shook her head.
So far, she had only successfully discerned the nature of her father and his cohort, Carlos. Beyond that, she was blind and dumb and stupid. How long would it be before Pam betrayed her? How long before Eric tore her apart for a simple mistake?
A chill ran down her spine. They had arrived, though, so she let the thought go. She had to face her reality and acknowledge that she was the worst person in the world at understanding other people. The truth about Haley had completely surprised her to the point where she was unbalanced and couldn't focus.
She almost told Eric she didn't think she should be in the battle, but he would say she was weak and prey and shouldn't be a vampire. She sucked in her courage and she moved in with the mercenaries, smoothing the black clothing and double-checking that her hair was still bound in its braid.
They moved in on the house. They were within a few yards before the sound of gunfire erupted. Alexis smiled. This time, unless they were wooden bullets or silver, they would not harm her. She flitted across the lawn and snapped the neck of one of the men on the porch while Pam did the same with the second man.
"Very good," Pam whispered, and Alexis heard her clearly. They climbed up to the balcony and entered through the second floor. Right into a trap. The window was slammed shut behind Alexis before she could react, and one of the men fired a net. It was laced in silver and they were on her with silver handcuffs as the silver sliced into her brutally.
She saw Pam beside her, though Pam was doing better than she was. She threw one of them across the room and ripped part of the netting before she was set upon and subdued.
Gunfire blazed all around the house now, and Alexis wept bloody tears as she looked at Pam. This was all her fault. Pam would have taken better care of herself if she hadn't been focused on training Alexis.
A kick landed in her side, and Alexis grunted. "Where's Haley, you bitch?" Alphonsio asked her. "Now that you're a vampire, you're fucking useless. I want my daughter back."
"She killed her babies," Alexis told him. Maybe he hadn't known.
"Nobody wants girls," Alphonsio told her. "They are useless. Just look at you."
"Eric is going to rip your spine out and eat you," Pam told him.
He chuckled. "I'm not worried. It did cost a lot of money to line the walls with silver-laced wallpaper, but when it comes to my grandchildren and the continuation of my empire, it's a small expense. Your Eric cannot get inside this house unless we open windows for him as we did for you. You would never have escaped earlier if the door hadn't happened to be open due to the renovations already."
He kicked Alexis again, then again. "You will all three be killed by the sun come morning, I promise you that. But not until you've told me where Haley is."
A knock on the door interrupted him.
"There are human soldiers, Senor," the man at the door told him in Spanish. Alexis spoke it well enough to understand the gist of what was said and that was all.
"Hiding behind humans? Not very vampiric of you," he said snidely to them before closing the door, leaving them with human men with guns standing over them and their flesh smoking from the silver.
"I am so going to love killing that man," Pam said.
"If we get out of here," Alexis said quietly.
"Eric will get us out. And he'll kill anything and everything that gets in his path," Pam said with as much assurance as if she were discussing nail polish colors.
"But the silver-"
"You think Eric will let a little thing like silver stop him?" Pam dismissed her concerns easily.
They were whispering in English, and one of the humans was clearly offended by it. He kicked Alexis and snapped, "Shut up" in a heavy Spanish accent.
As if the action had opened a sort of flood gate, the men began chatting amongst themselves. From what little Spanish she understood, Alexis immediately knew that it was a very bad thing for Pam and herself.
"I think they're going to rape us," she whispered to Pam.
"Yes, I am fluent in Spanish. An older form of it, but not that much has changed." She twisted to look toward the door. "If they do, they'll have to remove some of this silver. When they do, I will kill them all."
Alexis wished for just a part of Pam's confidence—in either Eric or herself. But not even Eric could get inside this house. Even if he could, would he? They had failed him, and Eric was uncompromising with failure.
She let her head droop onto the ground, ignoring it as the posture shoved silver deeper into her skin. She felt dreadful; weak and miserable with a side order of helpless. What good was being a vampire if you could just get wrapped in silver and raped anyway?