Twenty-Six
"It's about time," Josef quipped when Mick entered the room, but his eyes slid past his friend and settled on the older female vampire that followed so closely behind. "But you'll forgive me for the mess. I wasn't expecting Mick to bring company."
Mick wondered how dire a circumstance had to be to make Josef lose his wit. Obviously, being chained to a wall and held for an unknown reason by psychopath enemy vampires wasn't quite dire enough.
Oh, well. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
"Sorry," Mick responded. "I should've called first."
"So, Mick," Josef began conversationally and with a head-nod at Sylvia. "What's with your girlfriend? She didn't take the break up too well?"
"They never do," Mick answered, feigning regret. What the hell, he thought to himself. Gotta find the humor in life somewhere.
"Joke now, if you wish," Sylvia said, nonplussed. A firm hand planted in the middle of Mick's back propelled him to the wall next to Josef and a tight grip on his shoulder spun him so his back was to the wall. "You will not be joking so much later."
Mick stared at her, his faux humor gone. He'd known Josef was in the dank, cement wine cellar; he'd sensed him before they'd reached the room. He'd hoped, however, that Beth's missing scent was a mistake, unlikely as that was, somehow covered by the muskiness of the mold that covered the walls.
Now that he was in the room, however, Mick knew there was no mistake. Beth wasn't there. Everything in him said attack. The vampire within wanted to fight back, wanted to defend itself, wanted to launch its body at the enemy and sink its fangs into her throat.....
But he couldn't. Mick knew that. He was relieved to see that Josef had come to no harm, but Beth was the vulnerable one, and if he was going to get a chance to find her, he had no choice but to play it by ear.
Mick's instincts screamed against allowing Sylvia to snap the heavy iron shackles around his wrists, but he stood still. Mick's instincts raged when Sylvia snapped heavier iron shackles around his ankles, but he didn't fight.
Everything in him wanted to pull and shriek until he was loose, but Mick forcibly calmed himself as Sylvia stood back and admired her two prizes with a smirk. Mick didn't know how he'd find Beth, shackled as he was, but it gave him better odds than if he were dead. Which he figured he surely would be if he'd tried to fight back. There was a time and a place for that, and it wasn't right then, right there.
"I wouldn't try to pull loose if I were you," Sylvia suggested. She reached out and ran a finger around one of Mick's shackles as seductively as if she were caressing a lover. "These are specially made for situations just.....like.....this. The chains are made to hold ships to their moorings, and they are beyond even the strength of one much stronger than either of you, and the chains are held by spikes that are sunk three feet into the cement walls. I believe only an act of God could pull them loose. And if you're wondering about the shackles....well, they are not quite pure iron. The makers have generously laced silver throughout them. In the unlikely event that one of you is strong enough to break one.....well, you can imagine the agony of the silver burning into your skin, entering your blood before your abrasions heal....."
"Yeah, yeah, we get the point," Josef interrupted with his trademark snark. "Inescapable, blah, blah, blah."
Sylvia stopped speaking, but her gaze traveled slowly to Josef. It was a slow, lazy glance that traveled from top to bottom and up again, taking in the sight of Josef as if he were a long-awaited treat.
"You know," she said slowly, licking her lips, "it would have been enough to have just Mick here. But you.....you are the bonus. The cherry on the sundae. To be the one to have bested the infamous Josef Kostan......"
"I'm not bested yet," Josef pointed out, his humor waning but still in evidence.
"Just wait," Sylvia said, somehow still making every move, every word, seem seductive. She turned and sashayed away slowly, and Mick wondered if she'd added extra wiggle to her walk, or if he'd simply never noticed it before.
"Now I see why you were attracted to her," Josef said from beside Mick.
Mick turned his head in Josef's direction to see his friend's head tilted steeply and his eyes firmly on Sylvia's rear end as she disappeared through the door. It slammed shut behind her, echoing through the large, concrete cellar. "She has a nice ass."
"Josef!" Mick wasn't sure what he was protesting, but he felt the need to bring the other vampire back to the business at hand.
"What?" Josef asked innocently, looking at Mick. "You don't think she has a nice ass?"
"What? No! Well, yes, she does, but that's not....." Mick glared at Josef, irritated that the other had managed to fluster him. Not that it was the first time. Finally, Mick discarded any of the previous defenses about the attractiveness of Sylvia's derriere and settled with, "I wasn't attracted to her."
"No?" Josef asked with fake bemusement. "Why not?"
"I just wasn't. She's a friend. Was a friend."
"Not a very good one."
"No," Mick agreed with Josef's observation with a sigh. "But I thought she was."
"That seems to be going around," Josef said, and Mick wondered at the momentary expression that flitted across the other vampire's face.
"What do you mean?"
Josef seemed to visibly shake himself from whatever thought he'd been lost in and looked over at Mick. "Nothing. Just.....when you get to be my age, I hope you have better judgment about who to trust and who not to."
Mick didn't answer; what could he say to that? He had the feeling it was more than just an admonishment toward him. There was a second meaning there that he couldn't decipher, but they had other things to worry about at the moment.
Josef broke the mood. "So.....I'm infamous now. I wondered when that would happen." He grinned over at Mick.
"Don't let it go to your head. I think you've been infamous in your own mind for long time."
"Like I said before, I have a healthy self-esteem. Nothing wrong with that."
"Self- esteem," Mick snorted a dry laugh. "More like grandiose ideas of yourself."
"Of course. Brought on by my high self-esteem."
Mick sighed inwardly. They could go on for hours like that. Truth was, Josef did have quite the reputation amongst the local vamp community, and to many abroad, as they both well knew, and his self-esteem had been honestly earned, but it was no time for jokes. They had a more serious situation to think about.
Mick shook one wrist, causing the chain to scrape against the concrete. "What're we gonna do about this?" he asked.
"Escape, would be my suggestion."
"I know that. Any suggestions on how we would accomplish that?"
"Hey, I came up with the idea of escaping. You can figure out how. I can't do everything."
"Josef! This is no time for jokes!"
"I'm well aware."
"Then why aren't you taking this more seriously? We've got to get out of here, and I've got to find Beth."
"I've been in these chains a couple hours, Mick. If I can't get out of them, you won't be able to. And trust me, I've tried. All I did was exhaust myself. We'll have to think of something other than breaking loose."
Mick let his head fall back against the wall for a moment and closed his eyes in frustration, then he straightened up, opened his eyes, and inspected his predicament closely.
As Sylvia had said, the chains were indeed quite strong, and it was easy to believe that they'd been effective at mooring ships in a harbor. Each link was half as long as his arm, and just as thick, and the chains hung heavy on his body. Mick knew that if he and Josef hadn't possessed the superior strength of the vampire, their bodies wouldn't have taken the weight easily. There was no doubt that on the ships, or wherever else such chains were used, machinery was required to handle them.
Each chain- one for each of their wrists, and one for each of their ankles- was secured to the cement wall with what looked like large railroad spikes driven into the cement. Mick wondered how much time it had taken to secure all eight lengths of chain in that manner; it had certainly required immeasurable strength, and it would require even more to try to pull them out.
Mick gave a few experimental tugs anyway, then a few more violent tries. The only thing he succeeded in doing was frustrating himself even further and tiring himself out. His attempts would have snapped ordinary chains.
Finally relaxing against the wall behind him, Mick glared at Josef as Josef shook his head slowly.
"Told you," Josef said.
"I had to try."
"I know."
"You think there's really silver laced through the shackles?" Mick held one iron-shackled wrist in his line of vision for inspection. They were thick, and seemed sound, but if the cement, the chains, or the spikes couldn't be broken or moved in any way, perhaps the shackles could be broken or something. It was conceivable that the welding that attached each shackle to one of the large chain links could be snapped. It would undoubtedly cause injuries, but that wouldn't matter too much, with their healing abilities. Unless there really was silver.
"You can count on it," Josef said, and held up his own wrist as proof. Even in the dark, Mick's raptor vision could see a ragged tear in the flesh of Josef's wrist.
"Are you okay?" Mick asked quickly, moving his eyes to Josef's face to scan for signs of weakness or silver poisoning.
"I'm fine, but I wouldn't recommend pulling too hard against them. The edges are rough and sharp."
"But the silver......"
"I don't think there's any in my blood. I'd know by now. But there must be traces of it in the iron just like she said, because the cuts haven't healed."
"At least you didn't bleed out," Mick pointed out, looking closely at the cuts on Josef's wrist from his own spot against the wall. They looked terrible: deep and ragged, the edges of the slices singed and swollen, which Mick attributed to minor contact with the silver.
God, Mick thought. It looks like somebody sliced his wrist with a blade. It has to hurt like hell. He remembered his own mishaps involving silver, even in small or superficial doses, and he knew Josef had to be fighting inwardly to suppress the pain. Or perhaps, to hide it.
"Did she give you any little tidbits as to why we're in this position?" Josef asked Mick, effectively changing the subject from his small but gruesome injury.
"No. You?"
"Nope. I thought Sylvia might have talked, seeing as you're the man of the hour."
"Me? You’re the cherry on top, remember?"
"Ah, yes," Josef fake-reminisced. "The bonus, if I remember correctly."
"We have to get out of here, Josef," Mick said. The frustration welled up from inside, filling his chest with something that felt a lot like panic. "I have to find Beth." Mick gave a few more vain tugs against his heavy restraints.
"We will, Mick. Don't worry, buddy. We just have to bide our time and wait for the right moment."
"Yeah, well, I hope it comes soon."
"It will."
"I like your optimism, Josef, but.....well, I just hope you're right."
"Of course I am. I have no intention of letting this disgusting cellar become my crypt."
It was a strange anomaly for Mick. When he got into dicey situations on his own, he was shrewd in looking for solutions and had his own brand of optimism that he'd find one. And of course, it helped knowing Josef was in the background serving either as backup, or at least as someone that would set out to find him if Mick seemed to disappear.
But now, Mick found that Josef also served as his stabilizer. Mick was a little worried that it seemed just a bit too easy to let his own optimism slip a little at the knowledge that Josef was there to take up the slack, and he made a mental note to stay in the game as if he were there alone. But it was sure nice to know that he wasn't.
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Beth
Beth scrunched herself in her little corner as small as possible in an attempt to keep herself warm, her handcuff rattling with each movement. She dozed off continually, and every time she jerked awake, she tried not to berate herself for falling asleep in such a predicament.
It had to be the wee hours of the morning, after all, and she'd been quite busy through most of the night.
Can't blame a girl for needing her sleep, she tried defending herself to her own more critical side. It also kept her from worrying too much about the circumstances she couldn't escape from and couldn't control, such as where Mick and Josef were, and what was going to happen to her.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever see the light of day again, then firmly pushed that thought away and let herself fall into another short doze.
When she jerked awake again, she could feel that something in the room had changed while she slept. Her head was resting on her pulled up knees and she was afraid to open her eyes. She knew that there was a presence nearby. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
One of the monsters had come out to play.
She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, unwilling to face the presence yet, and her breath choked in her chest.
Then a hand lightly touched her knee, and Beth erupted in a flurry of ear-piercing screams and flailing limbs.
It was by design, mostly, but she had to make an effort not to let the fear overtake her. It was a primitive instinct that told her to frighten the beast with noise and fight for all she was worth, even if it was the last thing she did.
So Beth's shattering screams echoed from the walls, and she flailed with both feet and her free arm and landed several satisfying blows to the presence in the grayness. Many of them elicited vague grunts, and she knew she was solidly connecting because she could feel it in her own legs and feet and hand, and she might have succeeded in incapacitating the presence if it had been anything other than a vampire.
"Shut up!" a voice hissed at her, but that just made her more determined to fight. If they were going to kill her, they wouldn't do it without effort, she vowed. And maybe they'd even remember with respect the human that had fought so hard.
Beth's screams were finally ended when a hand slapped itself over her mouth and muffled the noise and her legs were caught and held under an iron-strong arm. Her one free hand, still flailing out to connect, was caught around the wrist and held immobile.
Beth froze, her only movement her heavy breathing. Disgust filled her at the close proximity to the thing that she knew would kill her. By then, with her kicking and flailing, she was lying on her back, her legs almost over the lap of the Asian-looking vampire as her legs were held between his arm and his side. Her cuffed wrist was stretched above her head and her free wrist held out in mid-air.
She was helpless.
"I'll move my hand from your mouth if you promise not to scream. Okay?"
Beth considered refusing, just on principle. She glared at the vampire with hatred. Then she became aware that she was actually having trouble breathing, couldn't get enough breath in through her nose while breathing so heavily from her efforts at fighting.
It's not like screaming is going to help me anyway, she thought. There was no one to hear her but the ones who wanted to hurt her. She didn't even know if Josef and Mick were still alive. Her heart squeezed at the thought, but that wasn't the time for grief.
She nodded her head at the vampire. He removed his hand slowly, as if ready to clap it back over her mouth if she screamed again, but Beth just sucked in a couple deep breaths.
"I'm here to help you," the vampire said, to Beth's shock and great relief.
"Did Mick send you?"
"Not exactly."
"Then why.....?"
"None of that matters. You already know too much, so just be glad you're being left to live. I'm here to get you out."
"Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter, either."
"What about Mick? And Josef? Are they still here?"
"Don't worry about them," the vampire hissed in irritation. He let go of her wrist and reached for the other, the one cuffed to the underpipe of the industrial sink. "I'm here for you, not them. You have to get out."
Beth watched in awe as he put forth just a little effort and snapped the handcuff chain in half. She'd known the vampires were strong, but she rarely got a chance to see evidence of it.
She still had one metal cuff around her wrist, dangling a couple of the small chain links, but she was free. She pushed herself up to a sitting position then dusted her hands free of the dirt from the ground.
"I'm not leaving here without Mick," she insisted. "Where is he?"
"Stupid human! You have to go, if you want to live. I will take you out and get you to safety."
"Just tell me where he is. I'll get him myself," Beth insisted angrily. She didn't care what the vampire said or did, she wasn't leaving without Mick.
"I'll carry you if I have to," he threatened, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him.
Beth started to speak, but the vampire stiffened and put up a hand for silence, looking off to the right.
Beth heard a slight sound, what sounded like a whooshing of air, and suddenly there was a form there. It was shrouded in the dimness of the room, but she could see it, if not clearly.
"Jackson," a voice said. It was a female voice, cold and neutral. "You've made a mistake, interfering."
The male vampire, her rescuer- Jackson, she reminded herself- eased himself in front of Beth and faced off with the female in the shadows. Beth could feel Jackson's muscles bunch under the arm that was touching her shoulder. Jackson's head turned a tiny bit, enough to direct his words to her as she stood behind him.
"Get out."
Then he launched himself at the form in the shadows, and they collided with fearsome snarls and bared teeth.
Beth didn't have to be told twice. She spun and charged through the dark, old restaurant kitchen and into what had been the main dining area, barely avoiding the debris of old tables and chairs. She knew which way would take her to the lobby of the old hotel, and then to the street. She could vaguely make out dead, unlit exit signs above two doors.
That was where she should have gone. That was the direction she was supposed to go.
Instead, she spun again and headed further into the hotel, away from the relative safety of the public streets.
Mick was still there somewhere, in the hotel. She knew it.
She wasn't leaving without Mick.
TBC
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Mick wondered how dire a circumstance had to be to make Josef lose his wit. Obviously, being chained to a wall and held for an unknown reason by psychopath enemy vampires wasn't quite dire enough.
Oh, well. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
"Sorry," Mick responded. "I should've called first."
"So, Mick," Josef began conversationally and with a head-nod at Sylvia. "What's with your girlfriend? She didn't take the break up too well?"
"They never do," Mick answered, feigning regret. What the hell, he thought to himself. Gotta find the humor in life somewhere.
"Joke now, if you wish," Sylvia said, nonplussed. A firm hand planted in the middle of Mick's back propelled him to the wall next to Josef and a tight grip on his shoulder spun him so his back was to the wall. "You will not be joking so much later."
Mick stared at her, his faux humor gone. He'd known Josef was in the dank, cement wine cellar; he'd sensed him before they'd reached the room. He'd hoped, however, that Beth's missing scent was a mistake, unlikely as that was, somehow covered by the muskiness of the mold that covered the walls.
Now that he was in the room, however, Mick knew there was no mistake. Beth wasn't there. Everything in him said attack. The vampire within wanted to fight back, wanted to defend itself, wanted to launch its body at the enemy and sink its fangs into her throat.....
But he couldn't. Mick knew that. He was relieved to see that Josef had come to no harm, but Beth was the vulnerable one, and if he was going to get a chance to find her, he had no choice but to play it by ear.
Mick's instincts screamed against allowing Sylvia to snap the heavy iron shackles around his wrists, but he stood still. Mick's instincts raged when Sylvia snapped heavier iron shackles around his ankles, but he didn't fight.
Everything in him wanted to pull and shriek until he was loose, but Mick forcibly calmed himself as Sylvia stood back and admired her two prizes with a smirk. Mick didn't know how he'd find Beth, shackled as he was, but it gave him better odds than if he were dead. Which he figured he surely would be if he'd tried to fight back. There was a time and a place for that, and it wasn't right then, right there.
"I wouldn't try to pull loose if I were you," Sylvia suggested. She reached out and ran a finger around one of Mick's shackles as seductively as if she were caressing a lover. "These are specially made for situations just.....like.....this. The chains are made to hold ships to their moorings, and they are beyond even the strength of one much stronger than either of you, and the chains are held by spikes that are sunk three feet into the cement walls. I believe only an act of God could pull them loose. And if you're wondering about the shackles....well, they are not quite pure iron. The makers have generously laced silver throughout them. In the unlikely event that one of you is strong enough to break one.....well, you can imagine the agony of the silver burning into your skin, entering your blood before your abrasions heal....."
"Yeah, yeah, we get the point," Josef interrupted with his trademark snark. "Inescapable, blah, blah, blah."
Sylvia stopped speaking, but her gaze traveled slowly to Josef. It was a slow, lazy glance that traveled from top to bottom and up again, taking in the sight of Josef as if he were a long-awaited treat.
"You know," she said slowly, licking her lips, "it would have been enough to have just Mick here. But you.....you are the bonus. The cherry on the sundae. To be the one to have bested the infamous Josef Kostan......"
"I'm not bested yet," Josef pointed out, his humor waning but still in evidence.
"Just wait," Sylvia said, somehow still making every move, every word, seem seductive. She turned and sashayed away slowly, and Mick wondered if she'd added extra wiggle to her walk, or if he'd simply never noticed it before.
"Now I see why you were attracted to her," Josef said from beside Mick.
Mick turned his head in Josef's direction to see his friend's head tilted steeply and his eyes firmly on Sylvia's rear end as she disappeared through the door. It slammed shut behind her, echoing through the large, concrete cellar. "She has a nice ass."
"Josef!" Mick wasn't sure what he was protesting, but he felt the need to bring the other vampire back to the business at hand.
"What?" Josef asked innocently, looking at Mick. "You don't think she has a nice ass?"
"What? No! Well, yes, she does, but that's not....." Mick glared at Josef, irritated that the other had managed to fluster him. Not that it was the first time. Finally, Mick discarded any of the previous defenses about the attractiveness of Sylvia's derriere and settled with, "I wasn't attracted to her."
"No?" Josef asked with fake bemusement. "Why not?"
"I just wasn't. She's a friend. Was a friend."
"Not a very good one."
"No," Mick agreed with Josef's observation with a sigh. "But I thought she was."
"That seems to be going around," Josef said, and Mick wondered at the momentary expression that flitted across the other vampire's face.
"What do you mean?"
Josef seemed to visibly shake himself from whatever thought he'd been lost in and looked over at Mick. "Nothing. Just.....when you get to be my age, I hope you have better judgment about who to trust and who not to."
Mick didn't answer; what could he say to that? He had the feeling it was more than just an admonishment toward him. There was a second meaning there that he couldn't decipher, but they had other things to worry about at the moment.
Josef broke the mood. "So.....I'm infamous now. I wondered when that would happen." He grinned over at Mick.
"Don't let it go to your head. I think you've been infamous in your own mind for long time."
"Like I said before, I have a healthy self-esteem. Nothing wrong with that."
"Self- esteem," Mick snorted a dry laugh. "More like grandiose ideas of yourself."
"Of course. Brought on by my high self-esteem."
Mick sighed inwardly. They could go on for hours like that. Truth was, Josef did have quite the reputation amongst the local vamp community, and to many abroad, as they both well knew, and his self-esteem had been honestly earned, but it was no time for jokes. They had a more serious situation to think about.
Mick shook one wrist, causing the chain to scrape against the concrete. "What're we gonna do about this?" he asked.
"Escape, would be my suggestion."
"I know that. Any suggestions on how we would accomplish that?"
"Hey, I came up with the idea of escaping. You can figure out how. I can't do everything."
"Josef! This is no time for jokes!"
"I'm well aware."
"Then why aren't you taking this more seriously? We've got to get out of here, and I've got to find Beth."
"I've been in these chains a couple hours, Mick. If I can't get out of them, you won't be able to. And trust me, I've tried. All I did was exhaust myself. We'll have to think of something other than breaking loose."
Mick let his head fall back against the wall for a moment and closed his eyes in frustration, then he straightened up, opened his eyes, and inspected his predicament closely.
As Sylvia had said, the chains were indeed quite strong, and it was easy to believe that they'd been effective at mooring ships in a harbor. Each link was half as long as his arm, and just as thick, and the chains hung heavy on his body. Mick knew that if he and Josef hadn't possessed the superior strength of the vampire, their bodies wouldn't have taken the weight easily. There was no doubt that on the ships, or wherever else such chains were used, machinery was required to handle them.
Each chain- one for each of their wrists, and one for each of their ankles- was secured to the cement wall with what looked like large railroad spikes driven into the cement. Mick wondered how much time it had taken to secure all eight lengths of chain in that manner; it had certainly required immeasurable strength, and it would require even more to try to pull them out.
Mick gave a few experimental tugs anyway, then a few more violent tries. The only thing he succeeded in doing was frustrating himself even further and tiring himself out. His attempts would have snapped ordinary chains.
Finally relaxing against the wall behind him, Mick glared at Josef as Josef shook his head slowly.
"Told you," Josef said.
"I had to try."
"I know."
"You think there's really silver laced through the shackles?" Mick held one iron-shackled wrist in his line of vision for inspection. They were thick, and seemed sound, but if the cement, the chains, or the spikes couldn't be broken or moved in any way, perhaps the shackles could be broken or something. It was conceivable that the welding that attached each shackle to one of the large chain links could be snapped. It would undoubtedly cause injuries, but that wouldn't matter too much, with their healing abilities. Unless there really was silver.
"You can count on it," Josef said, and held up his own wrist as proof. Even in the dark, Mick's raptor vision could see a ragged tear in the flesh of Josef's wrist.
"Are you okay?" Mick asked quickly, moving his eyes to Josef's face to scan for signs of weakness or silver poisoning.
"I'm fine, but I wouldn't recommend pulling too hard against them. The edges are rough and sharp."
"But the silver......"
"I don't think there's any in my blood. I'd know by now. But there must be traces of it in the iron just like she said, because the cuts haven't healed."
"At least you didn't bleed out," Mick pointed out, looking closely at the cuts on Josef's wrist from his own spot against the wall. They looked terrible: deep and ragged, the edges of the slices singed and swollen, which Mick attributed to minor contact with the silver.
God, Mick thought. It looks like somebody sliced his wrist with a blade. It has to hurt like hell. He remembered his own mishaps involving silver, even in small or superficial doses, and he knew Josef had to be fighting inwardly to suppress the pain. Or perhaps, to hide it.
"Did she give you any little tidbits as to why we're in this position?" Josef asked Mick, effectively changing the subject from his small but gruesome injury.
"No. You?"
"Nope. I thought Sylvia might have talked, seeing as you're the man of the hour."
"Me? You’re the cherry on top, remember?"
"Ah, yes," Josef fake-reminisced. "The bonus, if I remember correctly."
"We have to get out of here, Josef," Mick said. The frustration welled up from inside, filling his chest with something that felt a lot like panic. "I have to find Beth." Mick gave a few more vain tugs against his heavy restraints.
"We will, Mick. Don't worry, buddy. We just have to bide our time and wait for the right moment."
"Yeah, well, I hope it comes soon."
"It will."
"I like your optimism, Josef, but.....well, I just hope you're right."
"Of course I am. I have no intention of letting this disgusting cellar become my crypt."
It was a strange anomaly for Mick. When he got into dicey situations on his own, he was shrewd in looking for solutions and had his own brand of optimism that he'd find one. And of course, it helped knowing Josef was in the background serving either as backup, or at least as someone that would set out to find him if Mick seemed to disappear.
But now, Mick found that Josef also served as his stabilizer. Mick was a little worried that it seemed just a bit too easy to let his own optimism slip a little at the knowledge that Josef was there to take up the slack, and he made a mental note to stay in the game as if he were there alone. But it was sure nice to know that he wasn't.
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Beth
Beth scrunched herself in her little corner as small as possible in an attempt to keep herself warm, her handcuff rattling with each movement. She dozed off continually, and every time she jerked awake, she tried not to berate herself for falling asleep in such a predicament.
It had to be the wee hours of the morning, after all, and she'd been quite busy through most of the night.
Can't blame a girl for needing her sleep, she tried defending herself to her own more critical side. It also kept her from worrying too much about the circumstances she couldn't escape from and couldn't control, such as where Mick and Josef were, and what was going to happen to her.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever see the light of day again, then firmly pushed that thought away and let herself fall into another short doze.
When she jerked awake again, she could feel that something in the room had changed while she slept. Her head was resting on her pulled up knees and she was afraid to open her eyes. She knew that there was a presence nearby. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
One of the monsters had come out to play.
She squeezed her eyes closed tightly, unwilling to face the presence yet, and her breath choked in her chest.
Then a hand lightly touched her knee, and Beth erupted in a flurry of ear-piercing screams and flailing limbs.
It was by design, mostly, but she had to make an effort not to let the fear overtake her. It was a primitive instinct that told her to frighten the beast with noise and fight for all she was worth, even if it was the last thing she did.
So Beth's shattering screams echoed from the walls, and she flailed with both feet and her free arm and landed several satisfying blows to the presence in the grayness. Many of them elicited vague grunts, and she knew she was solidly connecting because she could feel it in her own legs and feet and hand, and she might have succeeded in incapacitating the presence if it had been anything other than a vampire.
"Shut up!" a voice hissed at her, but that just made her more determined to fight. If they were going to kill her, they wouldn't do it without effort, she vowed. And maybe they'd even remember with respect the human that had fought so hard.
Beth's screams were finally ended when a hand slapped itself over her mouth and muffled the noise and her legs were caught and held under an iron-strong arm. Her one free hand, still flailing out to connect, was caught around the wrist and held immobile.
Beth froze, her only movement her heavy breathing. Disgust filled her at the close proximity to the thing that she knew would kill her. By then, with her kicking and flailing, she was lying on her back, her legs almost over the lap of the Asian-looking vampire as her legs were held between his arm and his side. Her cuffed wrist was stretched above her head and her free wrist held out in mid-air.
She was helpless.
"I'll move my hand from your mouth if you promise not to scream. Okay?"
Beth considered refusing, just on principle. She glared at the vampire with hatred. Then she became aware that she was actually having trouble breathing, couldn't get enough breath in through her nose while breathing so heavily from her efforts at fighting.
It's not like screaming is going to help me anyway, she thought. There was no one to hear her but the ones who wanted to hurt her. She didn't even know if Josef and Mick were still alive. Her heart squeezed at the thought, but that wasn't the time for grief.
She nodded her head at the vampire. He removed his hand slowly, as if ready to clap it back over her mouth if she screamed again, but Beth just sucked in a couple deep breaths.
"I'm here to help you," the vampire said, to Beth's shock and great relief.
"Did Mick send you?"
"Not exactly."
"Then why.....?"
"None of that matters. You already know too much, so just be glad you're being left to live. I'm here to get you out."
"Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter, either."
"What about Mick? And Josef? Are they still here?"
"Don't worry about them," the vampire hissed in irritation. He let go of her wrist and reached for the other, the one cuffed to the underpipe of the industrial sink. "I'm here for you, not them. You have to get out."
Beth watched in awe as he put forth just a little effort and snapped the handcuff chain in half. She'd known the vampires were strong, but she rarely got a chance to see evidence of it.
She still had one metal cuff around her wrist, dangling a couple of the small chain links, but she was free. She pushed herself up to a sitting position then dusted her hands free of the dirt from the ground.
"I'm not leaving here without Mick," she insisted. "Where is he?"
"Stupid human! You have to go, if you want to live. I will take you out and get you to safety."
"Just tell me where he is. I'll get him myself," Beth insisted angrily. She didn't care what the vampire said or did, she wasn't leaving without Mick.
"I'll carry you if I have to," he threatened, getting to his feet and pulling her up with him.
Beth started to speak, but the vampire stiffened and put up a hand for silence, looking off to the right.
Beth heard a slight sound, what sounded like a whooshing of air, and suddenly there was a form there. It was shrouded in the dimness of the room, but she could see it, if not clearly.
"Jackson," a voice said. It was a female voice, cold and neutral. "You've made a mistake, interfering."
The male vampire, her rescuer- Jackson, she reminded herself- eased himself in front of Beth and faced off with the female in the shadows. Beth could feel Jackson's muscles bunch under the arm that was touching her shoulder. Jackson's head turned a tiny bit, enough to direct his words to her as she stood behind him.
"Get out."
Then he launched himself at the form in the shadows, and they collided with fearsome snarls and bared teeth.
Beth didn't have to be told twice. She spun and charged through the dark, old restaurant kitchen and into what had been the main dining area, barely avoiding the debris of old tables and chairs. She knew which way would take her to the lobby of the old hotel, and then to the street. She could vaguely make out dead, unlit exit signs above two doors.
That was where she should have gone. That was the direction she was supposed to go.
Instead, she spun again and headed further into the hotel, away from the relative safety of the public streets.
Mick was still there somewhere, in the hotel. She knew it.
She wasn't leaving without Mick.
TBC
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