The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (24 page)

Frankie’s nightmare began when
he was ten years old. He and Nicky fell asleep on the floor of the camper, and
he dreamt about a snake.

At first it was a small snake,
slithering about in the dirt in front of him. But then it began to grow. Six
feet long, ten, twenty…it became the largest snake in the world. And once it
was fully grown, it turned to Frankie, opened its mouth, and snapped.

Its mouth was around his legs.
The snake took a big gulp and its mouth was up to his waist. Another gulp. Up
to his chest. Frankie’s legs were starting to burn as the snake digested him
whole. He beat on the snake with his fists, tried to poke at its eyes, but
nothing worked. The snake was too strong.

Gulp.

Frankie was all the way in now.
Total darkness. Air running out. His clothes dissolving in digestive acid. The
walls squeezing him down. His arms starting to break.

And then he was in the chair,
looking at the vampire.

“Hello, Frankie,” she said. “My
name is Melissa.”

This part of the nightmare was
so much worse than the snake. This part of the nightmare never ended. The
vampire named Melissa made him a prisoner in his own body. His mind was no
longer his own. Days passed into months. Months passed into years. Frankie was
lost inside himself, the commands of Melissa Mayhew dictating what he could and
could not do.

It was strange and awful. A part
of him knew what was happening. A part of him knew this wasn’t what he wanted.
But that part was weak. It was a tiny voice inside a large machine that did
what the vampires wanted him to do.

Labor on the Farm, labor in the
mansions, labor for Melissa first, then Renata. Frankie scrubbed the floors,
pulled the weeds, mowed the lawns, dusted the furniture, and carried the dead
bodies to the furnace.

He was of two minds. The real
Frankie, soft and meager, and Frankie the slave, who was in control of his
body. Frankie the slave wanted only to please the vampires.

The word
GO
was like an
alarm clock that finally woke Frankie from the nightmare. The instant
Bernadette yelled the word, Frankie the slave disappeared. His body was once
again his own. His mind belonged to the real Frankie. No one else was in there
crowding him for space.

But there was one rule to
follow.

I must kill everyone before
they kill me.

It wasn’t a frightening thought,
or even an ugly one. It was just…true.

He was holding something in his
hand. A small ax. The kind he had used many, many times to chop wood and hack
at overgrown trees.

A boy came running at him,
wielding a club with metal spikes. The boy swung the club at Frankie’s head.
Frankie ducked. The spikes from the club pierced the tree behind him. The club
was stuck. Uncertain of what to do, the boy tried to shake the club loose.

Frankie chopped into the boy’s
neck, a single swing cutting so deep the boy instantly collapsed.

He heard laughter and applause
coming from up above. He looked up and saw the vampires. Renata, Lena, Mark,
Steffy, and many more. He had been made to memorize their faces and names,
taught to do their bidding.

Not anymore.

The realization hit him so hard
he almost fell down.

They are not the boss of me.
I do not have to do what they say. All I have to do is kill everyone before
they kill me.

And get out of here.

There was a house. Not too far
from here. He had been to the house the week before. Trapped inside his body,
looking through his own eyes, he watched as Frankie the slave lifted four
corpses from the floor and loaded them into a van. One of those corpses
belonged to Melissa Mayhew.

Frankie the slave scrubbed the
floors in that house until they were clean of blood. He found the computers in
the attic and removed them all. He took every piece of paper he could find. He
did all this because it was what Renata told him to do. And while he did it,
the real Frankie watched, helpless, screaming at him to stop and look around.

The real Frankie wanted to look
at the photographs on the wall. The photos showed a family. Two adults he
didn’t recognize, and a teenage girl he did.

The girl in the photos was
Nicky. He was certain of it. Celeste Nicole Allen, but everybody called her
Nicky.

His best friend in the world.
His only friend, really. During all those years of hard labor on the Farm,
while Frankie the slave did everything he was asked, the real Frankie took
comfort in his memories of Nicky. He remembered how they looked out for each
other, how they had a great time doing it. They lived amazing, wondrous lives,
free to do and be anything they pleased so long as they made it back to the
camper before dark.

Seeing Nicky in the photos of
that house made him want to scream.
Stop! Stop what you’re doing and look!
It’s Nicky! Right there in the picture! And there she is again! It’s her, I
know it! Would you please just stop and look for a minute!

But Frankie the slave paid him
no mind. He never did.

Now, free of that hideous slave
version of himself, he would go back to the house where he saw the photos. He
would find Nicky. They would look out for each other again.

As he thought this through it
became a second bit of truth for him, and now he had two rules to live by.

1. I must kill everyone
before they kill me.

2. I look out for Nicky and
she looks out for me.

A boy with a giant sword was
running in his direction. Frankie looked at his ax, which was tiny in
comparison to the sword. He dropped the ax and reached behind him, where the
spiked club was still stuck in the tree. With one tug it came out.

The boy swung the sword at
Frankie. He blocked it with the club. Then, his muscles remembering a summer
many years ago when he played baseball every afternoon, he struck the boy in
the chest with the club, one of the spikes going deep and killing the boy instantly.

I must kill everyone before
they kill me. I look out for Nicky and she looks out for me. I need to run.

What was that? A third bit of
info. Run? Yes, run. It was an instinct, and Frankie trusted his instincts. He
saw no one else to kill so he started to run.

But with his first step he
realized the spiked club would slow him down. He tossed it aside and grabbed
the ax he had started with. Then he sprinted for a break in the trees. His
instincts told him this was the way to go.
A break in the trees where I can
see the stars.

When he got there he looked up,
and remembered nights with Nicky, the two of them gazing through the moon roof
of the camper.

That’s the Big Dipper,
Nicky
told him. Her arm was pointing at a collection of stars in the sky.
You use
it to find Polaris, the North Star. Do you see it?

Yes, he saw it now. Looking up
through the clearing in the trees, he saw the Big Dipper, and let his eyes
drift up, just like Nicky taught him, until he saw Polaris.

That star will always tell
you which way is north.

But tonight he didn’t want to go
north. That house with Nicky’s pictures on the wall wasn’t north. Frankie knew
which way it was because he had driven the van to get there. That house was to
the east.

A memory of Nicky drawing a
four-pointed star in the sand. Nicky and Frankie were lost that day. Nicky used
the sun to move them in the right direction. North, south, west, and east.

To the right of the North Star.
That’s where he needed to go. Fast as he could, he ran east. There was movement
in the trees up above him, but nothing on the ground below. No one around he
needed to kill. Now it was time to run. Run to the house where he saw Nicky’s
picture.

*****

Renata was sitting in her
favorite perch. An old mulberry in the center of the forest. She had planted
this tree from seed on the night she moved into the mansion.

It quit growing a little over a
decade ago. Renata remembered when it happened. It was one of the great
disappointments of her life. She could count on so little in her life, but she
had always counted on the mulberry tree. It kept growing every year. Larger
around the trunk. Higher into the sky. Wider across the canopy.

Then it stopped. Its branches
rubbing up against the oaks and elms on either side, it quit its assault on the
sky. Renata remembered feeling betrayed by the tree, and in a fit of anger, she
tried to tear it down with her bare hands.

She couldn’t do it. A vampire
was capable of extraordinary feats of strength, but knocking over a mature
mulberry tree by hand wasn’t one of them.

The episode provided a wonderful
lesson for her. Even immortals have limits.

If you looked hard enough, you
could still see the scar on the trunk from Renata’s attempted murder of the
tree. Sometimes she came out at night and stared at it. A divot in the wood, a
discoloration in the bark, a reminder that the tree won.

They liked to believe they were
kings of the universe. Daciana encouraged them to think that way. But it simply
wasn’t true. None of them would live forever. They liked to call themselves
immortal, but they were just vampires. Vampires who got tired of living so
long, who grew sick of each other, who grew restless and acted out, seeking
some kind of change, any kind of change.

“Where’s he going?” Mark Spinoza
called out with a laugh.

He was referring to Frankie, who
had been the star of the show tonight. Two spectacular kills, both made with
ease, followed by a crazed sprint toward the eastern fence.

Renata leapt out of her tree and
landed in the elm where Mark was sitting.

“I’m not sure why he’s running,”
she said.  “He’s a little unpredictable.”

“You didn’t teach him to run for
cover?” Mark said.

“No. I taught him to kill or be
killed, but I’ve given him lots of leeway in how to do it.”

“Fascinating,” Mark said. “He’s
been just marvelous tonight. Two quick kills. Steffy’s little girl has two
also. I think it will come down to them.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,”
Renata said.

Steffy’s blonde assassin,
Deirdre, was engaged in a hunt for Oscar at present. He was leading her south.

Everyone else was dead, most
having been killed in a cute little bloodbath that happened as soon as
Bernadette said go.

“Deirdre will kill Oscar,”
Renata said. “Then she’ll go look for Frankie. She’ll run all the way across
the forest while he stands in place, waiting for her. By the time she finds
him, he’ll be rested and she’ll be exhausted.”

“Yes, yes, I could see that
happening. He’s a smart little booger, that Frankie.”

“He’s hardly little,” Renata
said.

They laughed together.

“Come on, Deirdre’s closing in
on Oscar,” Mark said. He jumped to the next tree, and the next. Renata followed
close behind. They were playful as they went, the two of them soaring as high
as they could above the canopy, laughing when they landed hard, enjoying the
night.

Funny. She was going to miss
this. As desperate as she was for a change to alleviate the boredom, now that
she knew one was coming, she felt nostalgic for all the years gone by.

That’s why this will be one
for the ages
, she thought.
That’s why this has to be the best Rose
Ransom ever.

They came to a stop in a maple
that hung directly above where Oscar was standing. All the other vampires were
in the tree with them. Steffy, Peter, Zachias, Laura…even Sergio.

“Here she comes, Oscar,” Laura
yelled. “Stay strong!”

“He doesn’t have a chance,” Mark
said. “Look at Deirdre run. What a mean little devil you created.”

“Yes, we really wanted her to
turn into a crazy bitch when the scrum started,” said Zachias.

Everybody laughed.

Renata did a quick head count of
the vampires in the tree. Someone was missing. Was it Bernadette?

“Hey Mark, where’s your lovely lady?”
Renata asked.

Mark looked up for only a
second.

“I dunno,” he said. “She must be
over watching Frankie, waiting for the action to come to him.”

Renata looked across the forest.
She couldn’t see that far. Too many trees in the way.

“Yeah, must be,” she said.

“Oh, look out!” Mark said.
“Deirdre’s grabbing the knife by the blade.”

“We’ve been working on this for
months,” Zachias said. “I’m so excited she’s going to try it.”

While Oscar stood at the ready,
holding out a giant spear, Deirdre cocked her arm and launched one of her
knives. Flying end over end, it made a straight line through the air, coming to
a stop in Oscar’s chest.

“Yes!” Zachias shouted.

Oscar fell to his knees. He
dropped his spear. With both hands, he heaved the knife out of his chest,
yelping in pain as he did so.

Deirdre arrived a second later,
and stabbed him in the throat.

*****

Jill was trapped in an
exhausting conversation with Isabel and Gabe about which teacher at Thorndike
was the worst.

“Ms. Tenorio is pretty awful,
but I’ll give you points on Mr. Holcomb,” Gabe said.

As much as she loathed her
present company, she’d rather talk about the worst teachers at school than face
a barrage of questions about Nicky and Ryan’s absence. Gabe and Isabella were
so drunk they had forgotten to care that one of the girls wearing black was
missing.

“At least Ms. Tenorio is cute,”
said Isabel. “Dumb, but cute.”

“You’d do her, wouldn’t you?”
Gabe said.

“Yeah, I totally would!”

The two of them broke into a fit
of laughter, Isabel laughing so hard she grabbed her stomach and doubled over.
With Isabel’s huge hairdo out of the way, Jill had a straight view across the
foyer.