Survivor - By Kaye Draper Page 0,42
It had all the effect of hitting a brick wall. Cashern pulled my hair aside and regarded me for a moment. “No hard feelings lamb, I just can’t let her get off making decrees like that. I have to make some impression or she’ll just keep walking all over me. I have to make her respect me. I’m sure you understand.”
“Fucker!” I screamed as loud as I could. Of course, there was no one around to hear me. No one that cared anyway.
I was thrown into a car. It was some big, boat-like number, good for hiding bodies. Luckily, they put me in the back seat, not the trunk. We drove for a couple of hours in silence as I furiously tried to figure out how the hell to get out of this. Nothing came to mind. Even if I threw myself out of the car, it wasn’t exactly as if I could just run away. I cursed my useless body for the millionth time.
Finally, we pulled off onto a country road somewhere. We bumped along over gravel for a few minutes before one of the creeps piped up. “This is good enough.”
The guy that was driving gave him a look, but he shrugged and pulled over. “If you say so.”
The vampires hauled me kicking and screaming out of the back of the car and tossed me into the ditch beside the road like I was a piece of trash. I was crying by then. Fall was coming, and the nights got cold- especially if you were sleeping in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere in a t-shirt and sandals.
As we drove, I had taken in the scenery by the fading light of the sun. There was nothing. Miles and miles of nothing. I couldn’t crawl to safety. I would struggle to crawl along the road as long as I could, hoping that someone just happened to drive by- and not run me over in the process- but it was a long shot.
The vampires were moving back to their car when they were ambushed. Darkness was falling and I couldn’t make out much of what was going on in the dusk. I could tell there was fighting though. Heavy duty fighting. It wasn’t the kind of crap you see on TV where guys are dancing around each other shouting insults and making threatening promises. This was pretty much silent. I heard the soft scuffling of feet, the sound of fists striking flesh, and the occasional soft curse or muffled moan. Then nothing.
I shrank down in my ditch, not knowing if I should call attention to myself, not knowing who was out there or who had won. I was biting my lip in indecision when a shadow materialized at my side. I shrieked and tried to crawl away, but large hands grabbed me and scooped me up. “You’re safe now.” Peter’s voice filled my head and I wrapped my arms around him in a death grip.
“I knew you’d come for me,” I said in a pathetic voice. I just kept saying it. I couldn’t seem to stop. Maybe it was shock. Or maybe I was just still convincing myself that he actually had come for me. I hadn’t been so sure there at the end, no matter what I was rambling now.
Peter wasn’t alone. He and a couple of vampires from the coven piled into the car Cashern’s vampires had recently vacated. I didn’t see any sign of the other vampires, but I didn’t look too hard. It was dark, and I didn’t really want to see. This way I could just pretend they had fled. I didn’t really think they had run away, but I could hope. “I’m sorry we left it so long,” Peter said into the darkness. “Leah was trying to figure out just what the hell they were up to.”
We drove back to the coven house to drop off the other vampires. Then Peter drove me home in silence. When we got to my apartment, he shut the car off and just sat there, staring out the window. I jumped when he spoke. “Melody, I’m so sorry for this. For getting you involved in my world. There has to be more to this whole mess. Cashern’s actions were just chaotic, every time we spoke with him, he kept swinging from one extreme to the next…” his voice trailed off and he made a visible effort to pull his thoughts back to the present. “I never