The Vampire Book of the Month Club (11 page)

“I thought your kind avoided the sun at all costs,” I murmur as I slide into the leather of the passenger seat and close the heavy door.

“The older you are,” he says, pushing a glowing blue button on the dashboard as the engine purrs to life, “the more resistant you are to the UV rays.”

“Resistant?” I ask as he cruises from the crowded parking lot of Nightshade Academy and out into the sparse midmorning traffic. “But not immune?”

“Never immune, dear Nora. At least, not while one is still alive.”

“Where are you taking me?” I ask as we cruise past Rodeo Drive and into—and then quickly out of—Beverly Hills proper.

It feels odd to be on the road—to be anywhere other than the marble-lined halls of Nightshade Academy—this early in the day.

The sky above is a pristine California blue, little white clouds few and far between.

The air has a hushed feel to it, and not just because we're trapped in this coffin of a car. It's like life is on hold, for everybody, until I get this mess sorted out.

Traffic is still thick with go-getters hustling between lanes, but few are as aggressive as Reece as he steers the silver bullet of a car through the pristine streets.

Huge mansions dot our path, giving way to gleaming office buildings wedged between old-school mission-style offices with Spanish-style roofs or sleek, modern-looking cafés lined with uncomfortable-looking metal tables for two, few of them bustling at this early hour.

Every building has character, that tragically hip and loaded-with-history silver-screen character, and how I wish I could just step out at the next light and take leave of this claustrophobic car and angry driver.

How I wish I could walk away from the way this story is unfolding and trash this plotline the way I've been trashing so many of Scarlet Stain's lately.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a trash bin for life, where you could drag all the scary, rotten, evil, mean, wicked moments and delete them permanently?

But even those computer files are never truly gone, I've heard. Instead, they haunt the innards of your computer where they lurk, just out of sight.

No, there is no way to delete or rewrite this particular scene. For once, I'm not the author. Reece is.

“We're going to a place where you'll be spending a lot of time,” he says as the neighborhoods we pass through suddenly grow more urban, then industrial, then . . . deserted.

I watch the streets zip past the tinted windows, darker than must be legal, hoping to remember where he's taking me.

“No need to memorize the details,” he says impatiently, as if this is amateur hour on some prime-time cop show and he's the crusty veteran policeman to my eager but clueless rookie. “I'm not kidnapping you, after all. You'll be free to come or go as you please. But I promise you that once you hear my offer, you'll find it hard to resist.”

Ugh. Nothing worse than a smug-ass vampire.

We ride in silence for another few minutes, the beauty, history, and charm of Beverly Hills long gone as we pass derelict brick factories and junkyards until we come to a large warehouse at the end of an industrial cul-de-sac. It is bordered on one side by an empty field, on the other by a fenced-in lot full of rusty cars.

He pulls around to the back of the warehouse, a long and dusty journey in itself, and as we emerge from the car, I hear nothing but the hum of vehicles flying by on the distant highway and crickets chirping in the vacant lot next door.

“Peaceful, isn't it?” he asks over his shoulder. A gleaming new padlock hangs from a twisting length of rusty chain link around two door handles, and he slides a small key in, his long pale fingers are swift and agile. He pauses abruptly. “So peaceful,” he repeats, as if to himself. “No one to hear you scream, Nora. No one to run to if you dared. No one to listen to your story if you found the courage to tell it. This is my kind of place.” Then, quickly, he returns to the lock.

The chain falls to the ground, where he leaves it—no need to worry about anyone breaking in or neighbors stumbling across it.

We both step over it to enter the main doorway. Inside, the floor is rough concrete covered by years, maybe decades, of dust, sand, and rat droppings. It is vast and hopeless.

The walls are a drab tan, covered with grime and dust and oil and grease and the odd swatch of indecipherable graffiti, long since faded.

The skeleton of old, rusty machinery sits here and there, with no rhyme or reason, their working parts long ago raided for metals and anything else the squatters who spent time here could pawn, recycle, or perhaps stab each other with.

It goes on forever, longer than it is wide, and endlessly long at that.

Dozens—who knows, maybe hundreds—of broken windowpanes circle the ceiling. They let in dusty, diffused light that takes so long to get to the floor, it's orange and muted by the time it arrives.

The warehouse is at least three or four stories tall, but there are no other floors, save for an office way in the back, roughly the size of my mom's old trailer, accessed by a single, steep metal staircase that's missing about half the rungs in the middle. The office windows are broken, with toilet paper hanging out of one and reaching almost all the way to the floor below. It's the kind of place you could ride a bike around three or four times, front to back, back to front, and be winded.

Here and there random signs of human life appear: a discarded milk crate, a broken beer bottle, a can with the top cut off and full of sand and cigarette butts, a crumpled Nacho Tacos bag.

We stand just inside the doorway for a quiet moment. Our eyes—or perhaps just my eyes—adjust to the dim lighting. He marches forward, no doubt expecting me to follow. Dutifully, without argument, I do. Our careful footsteps echo across the wide expanse, the whole warehouse endless and broken and rusty and gross.

Except . . .

Except for a section there to the left, which has been swept, sanded, smoothed, tiled, and separated by three oriental screens. They are beautiful, luxurious, and I'm immediately drawn to them. I step closer without asking permission, and Reece follows without giving any. They look so out of place in this depressing dungeon.

“What is this place?” I ask, moving steadily toward the red-and-black screens, which are covered with traditional Japanese drawings: sumo wrestlers and petite women in flowing kimonos. Each screen has four panels, and the tops billow in alternating silky white drapes that cascade down to cover the gaps where the screens bend.

“This?” Reece asks, dangerously close to the back of my neck as I approach the opening of the three bordering screens. “This is for you, Nora. This is
all
for you.”

I enter the opening of the room (I don't know what else to call it), stepping onto a grand woven black-and-red silk rug that covers the entire floor.

In the middle of the rug is a big black desk, the kind only an author could fully appreciate—a place to spend a lot of time, with plenty of room up top for papers and books and pages and drafts and pens and pencils and sodas and open bags of chips but also plenty of legroom below for fidgeting when the ideas just won't come but the pages are due anyway.

If I had a house of my own, somewhere up in the Hills, with a home office, a great view, lots of windows to let in all that beautiful California sun, and hardwood floors to roll my chair across, it's just the kind of desk I would choose.

On top of the desk is a laptop, but not just any laptop. It's the exact same model and year of the one I use to tap out all the Better off Bled books, down to the ergonomic wrist guard and the sleek metallic skin. Nearby is a wireless printer, just as sleek and making me wonder how he could know the very tech I use and feel so comfortable with.

In the space between each of the ornate oriental screens are towering wrought-iron candelabras in all different sizes, the kind you see in Hollywood movies where they have unlimited budgets and a team of people whose whole job, every day, is simply to light the sets.

In all of the candleholders sit flickering candles—long ones and short ones and tan ones and white ones and ivory ones—that fill the roomy space with the scents of ginger and nutmeg.

Thick satin throw pillows as big as couch cushions in all colors of the rainbow lean against each side of the desk.

I approach it cautiously, my hand coming to rest on one of those expensive, space-age, ergonomically correct chairs: the kind with gears and levers and pulleys and hydraulics that hiss when you finally take a seat.

The laptop is open, the screen black.

I brush my finger gently across the mouse pad and the screen flickers to life, revealing a new document, the screen mostly white except for some big, bold type in the middle of the page.

I recognize it immediately as a title page. This is what it says:

Better off Bled #5:

Scarlet's Symphony of Pain

by Nora Falcon

“What do you think?” Reece asks from the entrance, standing just to the side and looking at me rather than at the glowing laptop screen. “Catchy, huh?”

I turn toward him, his slim body suddenly seeming to block the opening to my private, if glorified cubicle.

Trying to sound brave and dismissive, I say, “Plenty catchy. I wish you luck with it. My lawyers might have some issues with the title and the subtitle and the byline, of course, but other than that, you should be OK. I already told you—”

“Before you answer,” he interrupts, sliding a remote control out of his jacket pocket, “I want you to see something.”

“I don't want to see something.” I stay put. “I've seen quite enough.”

“No,” he says, his voice deep and deadly. “You've never seen anything quite like this.” And with that dramatic announcement, he steps to the side while pressing a small red button at the top of the remote.

I look past him and focus on a large cube in the middle of the empty warehouse floor. I don't know how I could have missed it when I first walked in, other than the vibrant oriental screens drawing my attention in the opposite direction.

The cube is covered with shimmering silver curtains. They're so shimmery, so thin, they might even be parachutes for all I know. They're billowing now but not from any breeze. Something in the remote has triggered a switch at the top of the cube, and now the curtains fall down the sides of the cube like a waterfall, pooling in great quivering heaps onto the floor.

It's no square; it's a cage.

Inside the cage, arms chained above his head, feet barely touching the floor, is Wyatt.

“T
ake him down,” I say, rushing out of the frilly room and across the pitted, dusty floor toward the cage.

Reece follows me slowly, dawdling, stepping on glass and rusty tin and not saying a single word as I take in the scene.

Wyatt is still wearing the black track pants from the other day at Hallowed Grounds. His chest is still covered by the too-snug gray T-shirt, coated with the grime of the warehouse and streaked with sweat, probably some tears, and the slightest trace of blood just under his sagging chin. His dirty head lolls across his chest.

I reach the bars, rattle them, feel their heft, their absolute impenetrability, and shriek, “Wyatt!”

He mumbles, shakes his head, then struggles to lift it.

“Nora?” His eyes are cloudy, his beautiful face as dirty as his smelly shirt. “Nora, get out of here. Run!” But it's not an order, not a shout. It's more like a . . . whimper.

His voice is listless, his arms just hanging there, not moving when he does.

The pits of his shirt are sweat-stained. I try to think how long it's been since I've last seen him: over fifteen hours now. Has he been hanging here the entire time? Chained up while I was arguing with Abby to believe me and feeling sorry for myself in my comfortable dorm suite?

His arms quiver with tension, his wrists are bloody and bruised, his feet not quite flat on the unfinished wood floor of the cage. It looks so awkward, so painful. No wonder his voice is barely above a whisper, his chin wearing a groove in the stretched collar of his T-shirt.

I shush him gently and follow his arms from his sweaty pits to his biceps to his elbow to his forearm to his wrists, which are shackled to the bars of the cage midway up. Then I follow his legs from his slim waist to two more sets of shackles chaining his ankles. They're rusty and as impenetrable as the thick steel bars of his twelve-by-twelve-foot cage.

I hear the vague rustle of Wyatt's deep breaths against his sweaty T-shirt. He looks so different—so small and weak and helpless.

In school he is so strong and vibrant that girls watch him with avarice and guys watch him with jealously—even the ones who are prettier than him, because even their beauty can't match his charm and that gorgeous crooked grin. His beautiful blue eyes are dull now, the grin gone, the biceps flaccid, the long legs dangling, and it's all my fault.

Every minute of his pain, every ounce of energy and beauty Reece has stolen from Wyatt is because of me. All of it.

“Despite the grim circumstances,” Reece says, suddenly appearing by my side, “I assure you he's quite comfortable. The drugs ensure he's pain-free. Who knows, after our little . . . collaboration, he may not remember a thing. Probably better that way, for him anyway.”

I turn to him, blocking out the sight of Wyatt in my peripheral vision. “What do you want me to do?” There is no fight left in me. There is no deal to be made here, no negotiation to enter into, no fight to be won. This is not a scene in one of my books, a scene I can rewrite and twist to fit my needs—or, for that matter, Wyatt's.

This is real life, and for better or worse, I can do merely what I'm told and hope for the best.

“I only ask that you do for me what you already do for a living, Nora. Write.”

“Why? What is all . . . this about?”