I let them carry me out of the room, down the hall and into the basement before throwing me into a cell. I flinched as the door clanged shut. I didn’t say anything as they walked out.
Fifty years. I couldn’t believe it. After all my hard work staying off any of the major players’ radar, I’d signed away half a century of my life for a measly fifteen thousand dollars.
Could I even be held accountable if the person I was making the delivery to was dead before the deadline? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous. Not to mention impossible. I was a vampire not a necromancer.
The sorcerer would just have to understand that I put in a good faith effort but was prevented from doing my job by forces I couldn’t control.
I looked around, hope giving me renewed purpose. This was an old building. The basement was small, damp, and surprisingly well fortified. It held at least four cells that I could see, and looked like they pounded the bars into the ground and then poured the cement in after them. There were even bars on the ceiling and against the cement blocks of the foundation.
I grabbed one and yelped. The skin on the palm of my hand was angry red and blistered. Silver. They’d coated the damn things in silver.
Who did that? For that matter, what kind of people had cages in their basement? Not normal ones, that’s for sure.
Looked like I wasn’t going anywhere for the moment. At least there wasn’t a window in here. I wouldn’t want to fry in the morning sun.
I settled down onto a cot in the middle of the cell. There were no blankets or pillows but at least they’d provided a place to rest. Such nice captors.
The hours crawled by at an agonizing pace with nothing to do but worry. I passed some of the time by singing all the Army cadence’s I knew. That didn’t last long as I’d forgotten a lot of them in the short time I’d been out. Trying to sing any song I remembered didn’t last long. My memory had always been kind of bad when it came to remembering lyrics. After the fifth repetition of ‘The Itsy-Bitsy Spider’, I gave up on singing.
I laid back on the cot and stared at the bars above me.
I’d met a vampire and hadn’t even realized it until the werewolves pointed it out to me. How sad was that?
My knowledge of this world was exceedingly small even after two years. Some of that was because I had no reliable mentor. Everything had to be picked up on the fly. It didn’t make for a well-rounded education.
On the other hand, I’d made no real attempt to further my understanding, preferring to bury my head in the sand. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. Or so I told myself.
That truth wouldn’t hold for much longer. Not knowing about myself or the spooks around me was going to get me hurt or killed. I needed to find someone I could trust to teach me what I didn’t know.
For better or worse, I’d picked this way of life when I decided against declaring myself to the clans. I needed to own that decision. I didn’t survive a year in Afghanistan being shot at with mortars and dodging IEDs, and then live through my transformation to vampirism to let my ignorance get me killed now.
If I got out of this in one piece, things would have to change. I’d have to make more of an effort to learn about this world. It was the only way to keep myself safe.
The heavy thud of footsteps distracted me from my thoughts.
Heat bathed my skin and lightning snapped at my fingertips as the alpha’s power preceded him down the steps.
I remained reclining with my arms folded behind my head. The picture of relaxation.
He came to a stop in front of my cell.
The silence grew between us.
So, Mr. King of All He Surveys, what did you discover?
The scent of blood clinging to him told me exactly what he’d been up to in the past few hours.
“What are you?”
Huh. Of all the things he could ask, I hadn’t expected that one.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to ask that?”
Common etiquette among the spooks discouraged that kind of question. Some species were rare and hunted by the others. Also, it was a sign of status and power to be able to determine what brand of freak you were.
Maybe he wasn’t as powerful as I’d assumed.
“Didn’t yours tell you it was rude to break into someone else’s home?” he asked.
