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CHAPTER ONE 
BENTLEY
As soon as I walk into the office, I know something’s up. Everyone is gathered around a screen that’s playing something I can’t really see through the bodies crowded around it.
Curious, I make my way forward as someone turns off the lights, brightening up the screen.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Marcus barks, answering the very question I wanted to ask though I didn’t have the desire to bark it loudly.
“I don’t know, this just started broadcasting,” Finn says as I step up to them. Finn Hayes is the only human who works at the Vampire Related Crimes Unit and seems to be quite an interesting addition to the group. He joined recently during our last large case where a man by the name of Perry had created a group of humans who were trying to sow discord between the two species. They’d created a drug that had resulted in Marcus, Briar, and me attacking Finn, which I thought would be the last we saw of him, but he’s still with us and ready to take on another case, which I’m grateful for, since he seems to have helped us figure out how to work together as a team.
He just recently began dating Marcus, who is the oldest vampire in the department as well as my superior. All of us work as detectives, and if the vampire who is flashing his fangs while bound and blindfolded on the screen has anything to do with it, it seems like we have a new case.
I stare at the screen as the man sits in the metal chair, rocking it this way and that. He tugs at the chains that rattle as he twists his body, his expression one of panic.
“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you! Who the hell do you think you are?” the man asks, and I wonder if he knows about the camera.
“Is this live?” Marcus asks as he looks over at Alexei who’s one of the few still at his computer.
The Russian vampire, who is also on our team, nods. “It went live exactly two minutes ago and has already been shared thousands of times. We’ve seen a glimpse of a second person, probably the abductor, but nothing more than that. They haven’t said or done anything yet.”
“We already have a cyber team trying to track it down, but it all depends on how tech savvy our perp is,” Brooks, the deputy chief and our leader, says from the front of the room.
I’ve never dealt with a case like this before, but I guess with internet and technology becoming more relevant, things like this were bound to pop up. Obviously, there are a lot of cyber issues, but that usually falls into a different department.
My attention shifts back to the screen as the man on display lets out a sob. The background behind the man is a black sheet and there’s nothing else to give us a good idea of where he’s at—no discerning factors that could tell us where this is being recorded. It could be in someone’s house for all we know.
There’s a minor flash of the second man, mostly black clothes, and then a gun makes an appearance. The second man reaches in, still only showing his arm at most, and pulls the blindfold off the captive. The man yanks his head back to look at his captor and growls something inaudible at him. There’s nothing on his face that tells me that he recognizes the abductor, but my guess is that the captor has something covering his face. It’s clear he doesn’t want anyone to see him.
The abductor points toward the camera with his gun and the man shifts his eyes to look. He seems surprised but his eyes are darting back and forth, like he’s fixated on something beside it instead of directly in front of it.
That’s when the vampire shakes his head, turns back to his captor, and yells, “Fuck you. You won’t get away with this. Fuck you!”
The attacker shoots him in the leg and the vampire screams before his head is physically aimed in the direction of the screen. The captive hesitates until the gun is pressed against his head. I notice that the vampire is either extremely young or there’s something in the bullet because his leg isn’t healing. Instead of instantly healing, blood is oozing out of it, dyeing his pants red.
“I-I… fuck. Fine! I’ll do it!” he says. “Just promise you’ll let me go when I’m done?”
He glances at his abductor who must nod because he turns his attention back to the camera. “My name is Trent Wilder and they want you to know they’re coming for you. That you’ll be next. You know who you are and what you’ve done. The only way to survive is to give yourself up to the police. If you don’t, you’ll be d-dead within one month.” The vampire shifts, turning toward his attacker. “P-Please. Please, I’ll spill everything to the police. Let me go, I’ll tell them everything!”
The feed cuts and we’re all left standing in silence.
“If he killed him, he probably would’ve killed him on camera, right? Do we know the location yet?” Briar asks.
“The video’s settings show our local area, but that doesn’t mean he’s local,” Alexei explains. “You can state you’re from anywhere or put tags to direct a specific audience toward it, but we’re left to assume that yes, it’s our area. We could get a location on the captive and tell better by his place of residence. We’ll need someone to run sounds and see if they can pick up anything from the audio.”
“He was using specialized bullets too. You could see his leg wasn’t healing,” I say. But how the fuck did they get ahold of a bullet like that?
“Trent Wilder… Trent Wilder,” Finn says over and over as he rushes for his computer. Marcus and I crowd around him since he seems to have an idea. “The name sounds extremely familiar, right? Anyone else think it does?”
Marcus nods. “Wilder… the last name rings a bell. I think they’re an elite family of vampires. Old money. I don’t recognize the man who was on screen, though, but he could possibly be a relative.”
Within minutes, Finn finds out exactly who the man is, and like Marcus said, he’s a middle-aged vampire with a lot of old money coming from his father who is also a vampire.
I slide into my seat and pull up my own search on him and see that the man’s name has exploded along with the video and speculation of where he might be. People are already calling it a setup or a government conspiracy, and I know that within twenty-four hours, the internet will be abuzz with misinformation unless we do something to stop it. I watch the video again from the beginning to catch anything I could have missed but not much happened in the two minutes before I showed up.
The attacker never gives away anything, and you can’t even see an inch of his skin anywhere. He never comes on screen to allow us to guess his height or body type. His black clothes are baggy and give nothing away.
Marcus sets his phone down and leans into us. “They’re trying to track the IP address but they’re thinking he used an anonymizer or something like that to make it impossible to track. I don’t know, I know very little about computers. The video wasn’t live long before it got pulled from the streaming service.”
Brooks steps out of his office and gives us a wave the moment he spots us. “Church, bring your team in here.”
“Of course,” Marcus says as he waves at those of us sitting at the cubicle facing each other. There are three desks on each side, and while it was supposed to promote teamwork, instead, it just made for a lack of privacy when you didn’t want to stare someone in the face. Finn at least made it fun compared to how it was before he arrived. He’s already changed the dynamic of the group and he’s only been with us for one big case. It’s clear he plans on sticking around for more.
The five of us head toward Brooks’s office where he turns his computer screen around so we can see the message.
“I just received an email with an address on it.”
I peer over Finn’s shoulder to get a look since he’s about half a foot shorter than me.
If he speaks, he lives. If he lies, he dies. He knows the consequences. 3832 East Dale Street, Room 24
“Is it a setup?” Finn asks.
“Only one way to find out,” Marcus says. But Marcus is always eager for a fight because he has this ludicrous idea that he’s invincible. “Brooks, do we have permission to head out?”
Brooks stares at the screen for a moment longer before nodding. “Permission granted, but please be cautious. You don’t know if this is a setup. We were set up not that long ago, and we don’t want it to happen again,” Brooks says, referring to the blood that’d been dumped on the group, leaving us to attack Finn, who’d been new at the time, because he’d been the only human in the vicinity. Thankfully, we hadn’t scared him off because he was able to calm us all down and keep us from attacking him or any other human. I think that’s when the majority of us started to respect him.
We head out, following Marcus to the vehicles we have access to. Since the VRC is such a specialized unit, there are few who make the cut. Many vampires can’t handle the blood that the unit requires them to be used to. But since the standard police and human homicide detectives are to pass every vampire case over to us, we’re stuck doing it all. Which is why we are the ones responding instead of a specialized team who are trained to handle possible hostage situations.
We get into an armored vehicle that’s driven by a woman who’s part of the VRC but not a detective. While she heads toward our destination, Marcus has us armor up. This is something rather new seeing as before Finn came, Marcus liked to think everyone was unbeatable. But then Finn came in with his reasonable explanations on why people shouldn’t purposely put themselves in danger without at least a bulletproof vest.
It made so much sense that it’s a wonder why a group of older vampires never thought of it.
“Karsyn, get your vest on,” Finn orders.
Alexei just grumbles at him as he pulls it out. Alexei Karsynov is one of those people who wants you aware that you irritate him while actually wanting you to irritate him. Especially Finn. For having the desire to eat the human not that long ago, he’s now quite friendly to him—friendly by Alexei’s standards, anyway.
“I should have eaten you when I had the chance,” Alexei says.
“Church might eat you back if you try,” I warn Alexei.
“Then why don’t you try?” he asks me, like he wants me to be eaten instead.
“Hayes, do you feel like you’ve accomplished a lot when your team discusses eating you?” Briar asks, sounding curious. She’s generally the more low-key one of the group besides me. The two of us, for the most part, just kind of go along with whatever’s happening. The other three are the ones who love making chaos, death threats, and ridiculous jokes—that last one is mostly Finn, although he’s been known to drag a joke or two out of Alexei. Marcus, on the other hand, seems to only want to joke with Finn, which is weird when he used to proclaim that humans were semi useless.
“Feels pretty good, if I’m being honest. It’s not often that men fight over me,” Finn jokes.
“I will destroy anyone who plans to fight over you,” Marcus growls. Marcus isn’t much of a sharer, even if no one actually is trying to take Finn or even wants him. Marcus just wants to make sure everyone is extremely aware that Finn is his, and he’ll fuck up anyone who thinks otherwise.
“Maybe we could focus and do actual work,” Alexei says as he pulls up an interactive image of the outside of the building. It’s an older motel with doors leading outside, instead of being on the inside like many hotels. “It looks like there’s only one window at the back and one in the front. Oh, and it appears that the back window is in the bathroom that’s attached to the room. DeGray and I can go around back and move in, just in case the abductor is still inside and tries to flee.”
Marcus nods as he moves the image around before zooming in. “Sounds good. The rest of us will go in through the front. Please be safe and we’ll move in together only once we’re positive it’s not a setup.”
“The woman working the desk said the room was booked online and that there isn’t anyone in the surrounding rooms,” Alexei says.
“Did she say how he got the key for the room?” Finn asks.
“She said he’d asked her to leave the key in a specific spot because he’d be in after dark.”
The moment the vehicle stops, Alexei and I move around to the back of the building. It makes it harder to tell the exact room since the numbers aren’t on this side, and we have to count windows to make sure we’re at the right one. I have an earpiece in my left ear that is connected to the others so Marcus can relay the information when they have a plan to move in.
“The window’s open,” I say as I slip past it so Alexei can be on the left and I’ll take the right.
“Smells like they left this way,” he whispers, but we don’t make a move to follow the trail just yet. It’s not extremely fresh, telling me they probably already hit the road.
Marcus’s voice sounds in my ear. “I have the key. We’re going to move in through the front. Are you two in position in case he’s inside?”
“We’re next to an open window. I can hear someone inside, but it seems to be a single person. Do DeGray and I have permission to move in through the back window?” Alexei asks.
“Yes. Be careful.” That’s when I hear the front door open and Alexei grabs the ledge to pull himself up. I hear something out toward the trees that separate the motel from the highway and look out into them. When a cat notices me and starts trotting toward me, I turn away and pull myself through the open window and join the others. We end up in the bathroom and push forward into the main room where Finn is checking the man who’d been on the video while the other two are securing the area.
“Looks like you’ve healed alright. Are you hurt anywhere else?” Finn asks as he carefully removes the gag.
“That fucking psychopath tried to kill me! He fucking tried to kill me!” Wilder cries. He’s hysterical as his voice rises and he throws his body around in the chair.
“We need you to calm down,” Finn says, voice gentle. We’ve quickly learned that he’s generally the best one to deal with people because he’s not menacing and his smile puts almost everyone at ease.
Wilder seems to notice Finn at that moment, but the look on his face is anything but at ease. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, human?” the man asks, a bite to his words.
Finn hesitates and glances over at Marcus who’d stilled at the sharp tone the vampire had used with Finn. Marcus rushes in front of Finn, ready to kick Wilder’s ass even though we’re supposed to be saving the man tied to a chair. The funny thing is we all respect Finn and care about him enough that if Marcus did it and blamed it on the attacker, not a single one of us would say otherwise.
“Do you have a problem with that?” Marcus says, voice extremely quiet as he leans into him. Wilder’s eyes get huge as he realizes quite quickly that he’d better not have a problem with it or he might wish the abductor hadn’t let him go. The thing about Marcus is that he has the aura to make everyone get a bit timid around him. Even I feel timid during times like this.
So Marcus waits for the man to shake his head before drawing back. “Wilder, you’re going with us for some questions.”
“I’m under arrest?” he asks in disbelief.
Marcus turns his narrowed eyes onto him. “You’re going to answer some questions. DeGray, Karsyn, while we’re taking care of this, will you scout around back? See if you find anything?”
“Of course.”
Together, we head back outside, taking the open window since it beats walking around the entire building again. Once out there, we follow the trail the abductor had left behind.
“He clearly knew what he was doing. He wore some thick cologne to hide his natural scent,” Alexei says as he waves his hand over his face.
I nod. While the smell is quite trackable, it’d keep us from noticing if he left any scent behind. “It’s stinging my nose. He clearly doesn’t care we’re following him. He probably got in a car off the highway to avoid any security cameras on him,” I say as we cut straight through the batch of trees and over to a wire fence. We climb over the fence and walk up to the highway where the smell abruptly ends.
“He either had someone pick him up or had left a vehicle waiting here. Let’s see if we have any cameras on the premises and search for any tracks,” Alexei says.
We head back and finish at the motel, getting some analysts in to see if they can get prints on anything even though Wilder stated that his attacker never took his gloves off.
      
I stand on the other side of the one-way glass watching Marcus and Finn talk to Wilder. Clearly, the man is hiding something.
He likes to pretend he doesn’t know anything by folding his arms over his chest and looking extremely stubborn. “I don’t fucking know! Why would you believe some psychopath who abducted me and tied me up to a fucking chair and threatened to kill me? He shot me! He fucking shot me, yet you believe him over me?” the man asks. It’s clear he’s pissed about this whole thing but more than anything, he’s defensive. He’s doing everything he can to push the blame off himself, and in doing so, making himself look more guilty.
Marcus and Finn have been in these situations so many times that they already know something’s going on, but the man is taking it to his grave, and there’s no reason or way for us to hold him. So we have to do our best to protect him from whoever got ahold of him and keep it from happening again.
“We are aware you can protect yourself, but this person has already gotten ahold of you once and threatened to do it again. If you need us, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.”
“The fucker knocked me out somehow. I’d think you’d be more worried about that,” he says.
“We will definitely look into it and would like to ask you questions about where you were when it happened,” Finn says.
“I don’t have time for this shit. If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving,” Wilder says. “You have no way to keep me here.”
Finn sets a hand on Marcus’s chest, most likely to keep him from popping the man’s head from his body for having raised his voice with Finn. “That’s fine. Here’s our information if you think of anything else.”
Wilder glances at it then stands up and heads for the door without taking it. Marcus grabs the card and the man in the same breath. Then he smacks the card down onto the man’s hand so hard, I’m surprised he didn’t break his hand. “I insist you take it.”
“I’m honestly surprised Marcus hasn’t torn someone’s head off yet for sassing Finn,” I say as Alexei comes into the room.
“It’s coming. It’ll be a fucking mess. Blood everywhere, maybe some guts and brain matter.”
I snort. “And he’ll get away with it.”
“Of course he will. Those two are wicked. Finn just bats his weak little human eyes at people and gets what he wants, and all Church has to do is growl.”
“They’re both terrifying at what they do,” I joke.
“Nah, Finn’s scarier,” Alexei says.
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWO 
RIVER
Today has been rather shitty. My morning started off with a raging headache that kept me in bed longer than I wanted, then I accidentally cooked my oatmeal for six hundred seconds instead of sixty seconds—at least I caught that blunder after only a few minutes but long enough it was a bit black in the middle—and to toss the cherry on top, I stepped on my cat’s tail and she looked at me like I broke her heart. But now everything is good. It has to be or I’m gonna just crawl in a ditch somewhere and wait until morning.
I pull open the door to the small café bookshop and head over to the line that seems unreasonably long for this time of day. I should probably be doing something a bit more useful, but right now, sitting on my ass for an hour, reading a book and sipping a strawberry smoothie sounds like the best way to turn around this mess of a day.
When a vampire steps into line behind me, the hairs on the back of my neck instantly rise and my entire body tenses. I can feel his aura, but he’s clearly not trying to exude it. I try not to focus on the vampire because the man is probably just here for something to drink, maybe something to read, and I’m letting my thoughts run wild. I rub at my neck uncertainly.
Fucking vampires. With their annoyingly good looks, and their superior attitudes, and ability to murder with ease.
“Hi, how can I help you?” the barista asks with a smile.
Realizing she’s talking to me while my mind is fixated on the vampire behind me, I lunge forward. “Sorry! I’d like a medium strawberry smoothie, please.”
“Alright, that’ll be three seventy-five.”
I reach for my wallet and realize that the ditch better be ready for me because here I come with my pity party. After I stepped on the cat’s tail, I tripped and the wallet that’d been in my hand had gone flying. I ran after Banshee, my cat, in hopes of convincing her that I truly do love her and not to leave me for the neighbor who smells like catnip and weed.
“Sir?” the woman asks as I realize that I was wrong. I wasn’t waiting until the ditch for my pity party, it was starting now as I stood in dead silence.
“I’m sorry, I forgot my wallet. I apologize!” I say, horrified and embarrassed. Thank god she didn’t make my smoothie first.
“Here.” The vampire behind me reaches past and I pull back instinctively before realizing he’s just passing the woman his card. “And I just wanted a number two.”
I turn to him as the woman takes the card. “You didn’t have to do that!” I say. “Really, it’s fine, I’ll just come back later.”
The vampire gives me a soft smile, but I notice he shows me no fang. Far too often, they love throwing in a hint of fang, like they have to remind people just what they can do and what they are. His smile is kind and gentle as he says, “It’s no problem at all.” His smile reaches his blue eyes as he looks at me. Then he turns back to the cashier as I’m left watching the back of his head that’s covered in short blond hair with a crazy cowlick in the back, making a bit stand up at an odd angle.
While I feel weird taking this offer, I know I can’t really back out now that he already paid for it. But does he expect something out of this? To him, am I in some type of weird vampire binding now?
“Accepting this doesn’t make me like your bat slave or something, right?” I ask.
He raises an eyebrow but looks amused. “I don’t have any bats, but if I did, it might,” he teases.
“Hmm…” What a suspicious man. He’s handsome, as are most vampires—I think there’s something about becoming a monster that just draws us humans to them. Like they were mostly all humans before becoming vampires, so why are they now so attractive? Maybe it’s because humans are drawn to danger. Unless maybe there’s a rule that only the sexy ones are allowed to be changed and the others get culled. He has short blond hair, a neatly trimmed darker beard, and light blue eyes that pull me in, even though I know I should be wary of him, being a vampire. “Well, thank you for that. I was having a pretty rough day, so I really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” he says as the woman holds out the smoothie. I take it, give the man a smile, and head over to one of the only remaining tables. At first, I think the vampire is heading toward the door to leave before I realize he’s rushed over to pull it open for a mother trying to get her stroller through the door while everyone else watches. He’s suspiciously kind.
Weirdly kind.
He has to be up to something.
As I pull out my book, I notice the vampire make his way over to a bookshelf, and I wonder why I’m still watching him. It’s not like he’s just going to snack on me right in the middle of a café while he’s already sucking down some morbid-looking blood. No one else seems fazed by him, but that’s because vampires around here aren’t that uncommon. There are two just within my sights. I grew up in a neighborhood where half of them were vampires.
I peep at him from over the top of my book as I sip my strawberry smoothie. When he continues to do nothing entertaining, I decide that maybe I will read and stop fixating on creepily nice vampires.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
“Holy fuck tits!” I cry as I realize the vampire is like an inch from me. My book goes flying through the air, but he expertly catches it before it lands.
He looks a little alarmed at my cry. “I didn’t mean to startle you. All the other tables are full, and I was just wondering if I could read in this chair?” he asks as he points at the second chair at my table.
I lean back and give him my best “casual” look. “You didn’t startle me. I’m unstartleable. But yeah, sure. Have at it. It’s your chair now,” I say as he sets my book back into my hand. “Looky there, you even saved my page.”
“I do pride myself on keeping a book in pristine condition,” he says with a grin as he opens his bag and pulls out a book titled Daisy’s Unicorn Adventures and starts reading.
I stare at the man in pure confusion. I’m going crazy. My neighbor’s weed farm has invaded my air ducts and I’m high. I have to be. What or who is this man?
“Are you…” No. That’s not nice making fun of someone’s book. But my god. The vampire’s like six foot something, suckling down blood, and smiling about unicorns!
The vampire must notice my staring and probably assumes I’m a pervert at this point because he lowers the book. “I’m sorry, were you meeting someone? Do you want me to leave?”
“No! No… is that like one of those fake covers you slap over something that’s hardcore erotica with like tentacles and testicles?”
He flips his book this way and that before nodding. “Most definitely. Shall I read you a line?”
“Please do.”
He dramatically clears his throat. “Daisy couldn’t believe what she was seeing! This unicorn had a mane and tail made of rainbows!”
“Oh my god. Is the unicorn going to fuck her? I was wrong about the tentacles. It’s unicorn sex, right?”
He starts laughing and I’m surprised by it for some reason. I think I’d let my guard down and forgotten that I was fraternizing with a vampire. “No! At least I hope not. This is for grades one through three. I mean… it’s been a long time since I’ve gone to school, but I hope that’s not what they teach.”
“Sadly, it’s not. I would have done so much better in school if it was.”
The vampire turns the book around. “Look. There are even pictures!”
There’s a cutesy drawing of a young girl overlooking a whole herd of unicorns.
“Do they draw the sex scenes too?” I ask.
He flips through it before looking disappointed. “Maybe in the next book.”
“I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t be teasing you about your book choices. I was just… surprised is all.”
“Nah. My niece used to be an elementary school teacher and she loves these children’s books. So I was sampling a few of them to see which she’d like best. I do have to admit that I might be hooked on this one, though. I really want to know if Daisy can rescue the dandy unicorn or if Billy will capture it and slice its horn off and grind it into powder.”
“Wait, what? Are you exaggerating?”
He shakes his head as he flips through the book. “Nope. It’s horrifying. Everyone in all of the land knows about Billy and his meat grinder.”
“You have to be making this up,” I say.
He smiles. “A little bit. What about you? What are you reading?”
“Misery.”
“Isn’t that about the lady who is so obsessed with an author she ties him up and abuses him to make him write for her?”
“It is.”
“Man, and you’re judging my unicorn book. Sounds dark,” says the vampire who feasts on blood.
“The world is generally a dark and slightly fucked-up place. Like today, for instance, I stepped on my cat’s tail. That shit damages a person right in the soul. The way she cried and looked at me…” I shake my head. “I’m honestly not sure I’ll recover.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Was the cat alright?”
“Oh, she was fine, but it still hurt my soul.”
“Yeah, I get that. There’s nothing worse than someone innocent getting affected,” he says, and the way he says it makes me wonder what experience he has with this. Maybe he’s only pretending to be nice and he’s evil and collects human skulls or some shit. “What was your name?”
“River. You?”
“Bentley. River’s a unique name.”
“My brother said my parents had sex in the river, which is how I ended up with that. His name is Clay, though, so I’m not sure I want to know where he was conceived. My mom’s really into nature and my dad couldn’t care less.” Talking about them makes me miss them, but I can’t let that stop me. “What about you? Did your parents fornicate in a car to make you?”
“Ah, no, I was actually created before the Bentley. Maybe the horse drawing their coach was named Bentley, though,” he teases.
I’d assumed he wasn’t that old because the older ones are generally more stuck up and less prone to just being nice to humans unless they want to eat them.
Maybe he wants to eat me.
I glance down at my watch and realize I’ve already been here half an hour. I guess talking to random vampires kills time. “While I’d love to chat about you being named after a horse and the unicorn porn you’re reading, I have to get going. I really do appreciate the smoothie, though. What if I paid you back? Are you a regular? I could get your drink tomorrow.” What the hell am I doing? I’m just starved for interaction, right? Maybe I’m just tired of being lonely and forcing feral cats to be my friend because I have no one else. But he’s a fucking vampire.
“The look on your face tells me that you’re a bit horrified by the idea when it was your own suggestion…” Bentley says, sounding a bit confused.
“Oh! No, I just was wondering if I turned the… oven… off,” I say. “So… yeah, if you want, tomorrow. Same time. If not, whatever. Yeah. See ya! Thanks again!”
He raises an eyebrow, probably seeing me as a raving lunatic. “Um… yeah. Have a good night, River.”
I smile and rush for the door as I fixate on the fact that he didn’t confirm or deny tomorrow. Maybe I didn’t give him enough time to answer, and instead, endlessly babbled at him. I’m such an idiot. He’s a vampire.
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.
I hurry out to the car and get inside before driving to a small comic book store toward the end of town. They’re close to closing, but I park the car and get out with my backpack on and my hood up, doing my best to cover my face. Then I head around the side of the building and start walking.
I’ve never been the best at making decisions, so inviting a vampire to meet with me again really shouldn’t surprise me—even if it did. I always felt like I was a bit more indecisive than I should have been. It’s how I was with college and boyfriends and all that jazz. From a young age, I knew what I liked to do and that was drawing. I always wanted to focus on drawing, but my father was an immigrant from Puerto Rico and came from a very poor family. So he had extremely high hopes that his children would prosper in the US. They would go to college and use all the many resources they were given. He worked hard to get us there. My mother, who is white, also came from a poverty-stricken family, but the two of them sacrificed and worked hard to raise us middle-class. I felt like if I didn’t do more with my life, their efforts would have been for nothing.
So I went to college and got a degree in business. I got a really nice job right before shit went south.
I sigh.
And here I am.
I pull the mask snugly over my face before I walk through the fence into the self-storage area. When I reach the container far away from the others, I slip the key into the door and step inside before pulling the door shut behind me. There’s a racket going on but the moment I’m inside, it stops.
The vampire, who is lying on his side strapped down to a heavy metal chair, looks up at me, anger in his eyes.
“I will fucking kill you. I will rip your weak arms from your worthless body,” he growls, having lost the gag at some point.
Ah, fucking vampires and their superiority complex. See, Bentley? I bet deep down, under that good guy mask, you’re just like them. You’re just like all the other vampires who need to die.
I say nothing, not wanting him to hear my voice as I start to set up. This was supposed to happen earlier today, but my bad day made me put everything on hold while I prayed no one noticed the man in the container. Thankfully, this one was as far out as it could get, away from the busiest area. It allowed you to pick online and showed me which ones were occupied, so I just snatched one that wasn’t surrounded by anything.
I pull out another chair and set a large piece of paper on it that catches the vampire’s eye almost immediately. He begins to read it as I pull my camera out of my backpack and set it up before aiming it at him.
“Fuck you! Fuck you! I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re not burying me with that shit,” he growls. “We’re going to figure out who is underneath that mask of yours and we’re going to kill you. We’re going to tear you apart piece by fucking piece until there’s nothing left of you. We’re already right on your trail. You’ll be dead by morning if you don’t let me go.”
I honestly don’t believe a thing out of his mouth because if that was true, someone would have killed me already.
He begins thrashing and yanking, but the cuffs are police grade and he’s not going anywhere. He could break the chair, but his hands are cuffed to his legs and even if he breaks free, all he can do is thrash back and forth. I set my laptop up that’s designed to keep the police from tracking me to this destination. I want to make sure I’m extremely far away before they head here. Even if they do get to this location, they can’t connect me to it. I’ve done nothing to give myself away. Even the car I’m driving is leased to a man named Jonas Stevens and my other car is the one I use to drive around the city when I’m not involved in… this.
Hell, even if they do catch me, what’s it matter anymore? What does anything matter?
This is all that does.
When I go to grab his chair, he kicks off with his feet, flinging into me and throwing me back hard, but he can’t do much more than that, leaving me to step back until he’s done thrashing and kicking. This time, I just reach out with my hand and I heave him up so the chair is standing.
“No. Fuck. Stop. What do you want? Money? You want money? I’ll give you money. Come on,” he says. He’s done with the threats and moving on to negotiations. The last guy did the same thing. I ignore him and continue to set everything up until it’s perfect.
Then I go over to the camera, careful to keep myself out of the frame, and switch it on.
I wait a moment, making sure we’re live, and watch the views begin to flood in. They cancelled my first channel, but it takes mere minutes to start a new one. And once I share it on a social media group, it ignites. My views go from one to five hundred within a minute and it snowballs from there. I know it’s risky, but I want them to know I’m on to them. I know what they’ve done, and I will destroy them, even if it destroys me in the process.
The vampire nervously stares at the camera, then glances at me. “Help me! Please! Someone help me!” But he doesn’t know where he is or who I am. You’d think he’d be an old pro at this game by this point. I mean, he sure enjoys it when he’s on the other side.
I point my gun at his head, and he tries to lunge at me, but there’s no way he can reach me even if he’s determined to—this man has a whole lot more to lose than Wilder.
I point at the large paper next to the camera. The words are definitely big enough for him to see with his superior eyesight.
He shows me his fangs and I glance over at the computer. My views are up to a hundred thousand already. There’s only so much time before the police are on it and they’re hunting for me. I need him to talk and fast.
I aim my gun at his leg and motion to the paper.
“M-My name is Governor George White…” He trails off so I fire the gun again. I have very little experience with guns, but from this close, I’m bound to hit something. “Fuck! Stop! Please!” Now that he’s on the camera he’s not spitting as many threats at me. He wants to look good and wants everyone to sympathize with him. But he’s taking too long. I’m confident in my anonymity, but only for so long. And it would take the police or VRC exactly four minutes to get here if they found me immediately, and I don’t want to exceed that.
I glance at my watch that tells me I have two minutes and fifty-two seconds left.
“Because I have not confessed to the police—” He turns to look at me. “I don’t have anything to confess! I’ve done nothing wrong! You’ve got the wrong man!”
Suddenly, I hear a noise outside the storage compartment. Why would there be anyone back here when there are no units taken this far away?
“Help! Help!” White begins to scream.
Fuck. I clamp a hand over his mouth and he rams into me, throwing me back.
The police couldn’t have found me this quickly, could they? Fuck.
I drag him up, careful to keep my face out of the screen, and press the gun against his head. He quiets down as he turns to look at me. “I will fucking end you,” he hisses.
I hear another noise and quickly smack tape over his mouth as he tries to yell again. Suddenly my computer screen flashes, and I glance over at it as I’m told my live feed has been cut by someone on their end.
Fuck. Could they be here already?
I don’t care that he didn’t confess everything live. He doesn’t need to say it live because whether or not he said it, those assholes know what they’ve done. They know I’m coming for them and I will not stop until I’ve ruined them all.
I step up to him and get close enough I can whisper. “If you do not confess everything you’ve done to the police, you will die. I will not give you a second chance. And tell the others. Tell all your twisted and fucked-up friends that I’m coming for them.”
I hurry to gather all my stuff and make sure I left nothing behind besides the paper I’d insisted White read from. Since he’s not willing to read it aloud, the police can read it when they arrive. I should be safe to leave because if I did forget something in the room, it should be okay since I’d cleaned everything thoroughly beforehand so nothing had fingerprints. When I reach the door and look back at the man who’s lying on the ground, eyes locked on mine, he smiles.
“I can’t wait until we catch you. And then we’re going to tear you apart until there’s nothing left.”
Ah, clearly this man doesn’t know how far I’m willing to go to destroy him. Sometimes, I wonder if all vampires just need to die.
I make sure my mask is pulled on tightly before slipping through the door. Still not sure what was making the noise, I slowly start moving toward the exit. Footsteps behind me push me into a faster pace as I cautiously look behind myself.
About ten feet from the storage unit stands a vampire watching me closely. His eyes catch mine and he smiles, like he knows what I’ve done.
Without hesitation, I turn and run. I can feel him following me, but by the time I reach my car, he hasn’t stopped me. Quickly, I get in and throw the car in drive.
Why is he here? What does he want with me?