He turned his back on me and shut the door.
21
Isat in stunned silence, eating my first meal since learning that I was with child—not that a couple dry fortune cookies and water slurped from the sink faucet constituted dinner. I still could notbelieveMaxine’s callousness.
I was also reading my first words, provided via two small strips of paper. While mildly thought-provoking, the fortune cookie pearls of wisdom did absolutely nothing to improve my predicament.
He who gets the credit also gets the blame.
Every end once had a start.
Here’s what would have been more helpful:Look for the chisel hidden within your mattress when imprisoned by psychotic relatives.
Or:When knocked-up by a missing vampire baby daddy, the best course of action is . . .
I’d been drugged, abducted, held captive, drained of blood, and denied food by individuals who’d made zero attempt to hide their identities. Richard had boasted to me that he and his hunting club had been killing vampires for decades, and Maxine seemed disgusted by my pregnancy. Nobody knew where I was. Nobody, as far as I knew, was even looking for me.
It was time to face facts. No way were they going to let me live.
The way I was being treated was also getting progressively worse, almost as if Richard and Maxine were doing their best to view me as an object. I numbly wondered when they were planning on doing it—murdering me. Soon, I imagined. They had my blood, so there wasn’t anything stopping them now that they had everything they wanted.
I rubbed my belly, still trying to wrap my mind around the news. I’d gotten pregnant by a vampire, words I never thought I’d string together in my entire lifetime.
I didn’t know how I felt about it. I’d always had atake it or leave itframe of mind when it came to being a mother. If it happened, great. If it didn’t? Well, that was okay, too.
Once I’d gotten seriously involved with Robert, I didn’t give up on the idea of having children as much as I did push it to the back of my mind. I’d viewed it as improbable and thus no longer necessary to ponder, the way an average person might view taking a trip to Mars. It simply wasn’t in the cards for me.
I had to consider what it was, exactly, that I was carrying. Robert had been full human when he’d gotten me pregnant, but what if some of his vampy genes had remained in his sperm? What if the kid grew fangs while it was in my womb and started sucking on my blood from the inside? Was that even possible?
And, yes, while it was terribly old-fashioned of me, it bothered me that Robert and I weren’t married. Hell, I didn’t even know if we were still together, despite Joseph’s assurance that Serena was using Robert’s fangs to control him. I tearfully began to wonder if she might have killed him, but I quickly cut the thought off at the knees.
I loved Robert more than any man I’d ever been with, not that there had been many. There was no question in my mindthat he’d be an excellent father, but did hewantto be a father? And how would I be as a mother?
The most glaring obstacle Robert and I would face as parents was Robert’s vampirism. Robert and I were already facing a tough challenge as a couple because of my body’s insistence to stay human. While it hadn’t always been the case, I now wanted immortality—and had even tried changing into a vampire three agonizing times—but my body had rejected it. Seemed I was physically incapable of living forever.
Frustrated, scared, and feeling sorry for myself, I burst into tears.They’re going to come in and kill me any minute now, I thought miserably.
My stomach, growling fiercely and painfully, snapped me out of my wallowing. I rubbed my midsection, suddenly so enraged that I could hardly see straight. Those Nolan fuckers! They could deny me food all they wanted, but now they were messing with my baby, which I realized I wanted with every fiber of my being. Seething, I pictured a squishy pink toddler that was handsome like Robert, with big grey eyes and a tuft of dark hair, locked in a cell, starving, with nothing but dry fortune cookies to eat.
I would kill every single one of them if I had to, but we were going to get out of there.Alive.
I paced the room, which was essentially five steps forward and back within the cramped space. I stopped when I started to feel dizzy.
I had another look around for something that could be used as a weapon. I was getting creative, considering whittling the tiny bar of soap into a shank and using it on Maxine when she came to pester me about the identity of the baby’s father. Why couldn’t there be a piano in the room? Spies in movies used piano wires to strangle the bad guys, didn’t they?
I sank down on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling.Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself. I wouldn’t necessarily need tokillmy kidnappers. I’d only need to distract them long enough to make a run for it.
But how? I wondered, squinting at the light above.
I sat up with a jolt. The light bulb!
It was one of those energy saving bulbs, coiled and made of thick glass. If I shattered the tip, it would be an okay weapon. It wouldn’t be as solid or lethal as, say, the end of a broken beer bottle, but it could do some damage if I wielded it with conviction. While I hated the idea of doing it, stabbing Maxine would give me the best chance of escape. Jason would hopefully be so preoccupied with tending to her wounds that I’d be able to slip out the door.
There’d be no going back once I removed the light bulb from the fixture, since I couldn’t dream up a believable excuse for why it would be missing and broken off at the end. I’d have to wholly commit to my plan of attack, and I was ready to. No matter what I said or did, they were going to try to kill me, so why not at least put up a fight?
I envisioned how it would go down. Tomorrow morning, Maxine and Jason would enter the shed. I’d be waiting behind the door with the broken light bulb, ready to strike. Once Maxine walked in, I’d stab her, catching her off guard. She’d scream, which would cause Jason to rush to her side. With the two of them distracted, I’d slip out the door and make a run for it.
The annoyance of my plan was that the room would be dark once I unscrewed the bulb. Oh well. It wasn’t like I had a masterpiece to paint. Now was as good a time as any, I decided. If I stayed awake, I’d only fixate on how hungry I was.
