The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4) (2 page)

When she discovered I was alive, what sort of things might go through her head?  Would she be able to move on as I had intended for her?  Would Jackson be what she really needed?  If I were able to escape from this somehow, would she be happy to see me?  These were all questions that I had no answers for
and little right to ask
.  I certainly didn’t have anyone with me who was trustworthy enough to settle these inquiries upon.

I was left to ponder these things alone, in that little damp bedroom with the rose wallpaper.  With chains constructed of pure silver winding around each of my limbs, leaving me physically powerless to escape
from the bed to which they had me tethered
.  With no blood, no phone,
it seemed
that I had very little left to lose.

Until the door
to my room
opened
with a low groan
and a
very familiar, very beautiful
female vampire with red hair entered my cell, admiring my position with slanting blue eyes. 

“Well, my goodness.  Look at you
.”

Her movements were feline, calculated and slow as she crossed towards the only window in the room.  Unfortunately for me, it afforded little in the way of a view.  Years ago it had been boarded over.  Once Isaiah had me installed there, he stated bluntly that the sun would never pass through that one window.  It was a warning as much as a declaration of fact.  It wasn’t hard to understand his meaning.  He intended that I should never leave that room again.

“What in the hell are you doing here?”  I ground out between my teeth, straining
weakly
against the silver chains.

Amanda moved her eyes impassively over the conditions I’d been forced to live in and tipped her sharp chin towards me.
“I thought you should know that Sarah Wood is pining away for you like the simple Indiana girl she has proved
herself
to be.” 

Sarah. 
I
drew a sharp breath before thinking.  Her name still had that kind of effect on me.  Amanda had been expecting such a
reaction
.
  As I should have realized she would.

“Indeed?”
  My voice carried across the room with a distinct echo.

Her smile was edgy.  The glistening pale pink of her lipstick
was
muted against the brightness of her teeth.  “You’re not fooling anyone here, darling.  Every immortal in the new world has heard the colorful tale of Michael Graviano and the farm girl.”
  Moving closer, she reached into the stylish bag on her shoulder and drew out a small amber bottle filled with blood.  There was no mistaking the scent of it.

“What do you want?”
I asked.

She shrugged sadly and popped the top off the bottle
, drenching the entire room with the smell
.
 
I sagged against the bare mattress when the scent hit me.

“I’m here because Isaiah thinks I’m working with him.”

I imagined how sweet the elixir she held before me would taste against my tongue.  A
nd I hated her for bringing it.  With that little bottle before me, I felt a distinct pull towards what might become my
freedom. 
After spending so much time being resigned to die, the prospect of liberty seemed like a cruel joke.  In spite of myself,
I licked my dry lips in anticipation.
“And you’re not working for him?”

“I work for myself.  You’ve always known that about me.”

“Yes.  That’s why it doesn’t make sense that you’re here.”

Sighing like a gentle angel, she put the lip of the bottle against my lips and tipped it up
.  An explosion of power, unlike anything I’d ever felt, ignited in my head the moment the liquid made contact
.  It was light against my taste buds with a vaguely familiar flavor, but there was an element inside it that stirred me to life
like nothing before ever had
.  I felt the energy move through me like an electric current, hard and quick like a lover’s ea
ger thrust
.

As I tried to process the change, Amanda stepped quietly back and graced me with another cool smile.  The silver chains fell away instantly when I exerted only a tiny amount of pressure on them, hitting the floor and bringing forth a rise of gray dust
and a symphony of metal against metal.
  Rising from the filthy bed, I stared down at the chains for several moments.

I turned to her.  “What did you just give me?”

The lilting quality of her tone was deceptively innocent.  “Isaiah’s blood.”

CHAPTER TWO – Sarah

It’s okay.  I can do this.  No problem.  It’s just a horse, not a monster.

My left foot was in the stirrup.  My right foot was on the fence.  Messenger was standing there looking bored as I contemplated what horrible things might happen to me if I actually swung my
other
leg over the saddle.  Broken collarbone.  Dislocated hip.  Broken nose.  Concussion.
  Nothing good, that was sure.

She’s a good horse.  She’s never thrown anyone.  She’s never been aggressive.
  But my internal dialogue wasn’t helping me calm down very much.  The fear inside was sharper than ever, nudging and pushing at the flimsy courage I showed to the world.

“Shit.” 
I swore. 

Her big black head swung around
and
she
gave me a look of pure exasperation.

Messenger was my horse.  She was a Tennessee Walking horse who had been nothing more than a lawn orna
ment for the past four years.  She was originally a
gift from my father, and an attempt to get me to break out of the habit of shutting out the rest of the world.
  It hadn’t worked out as well as he had hoped.

My Dad had wanted me to ride again.
  Even after he first died, I couldn’t find it within myself to get up there and take the chance. 
Finally, after four years of
excuses,
I determined that enough time had been wasted. 
I had seen my friend Jackson ride her several times, and he never had any trouble with her.  But he was one of those kids who had grown up on the back of a horse and knew exactly what he was doing.  That didn’t mean I could expect the same results out of her.

A gentle puff of a breeze pushed against my back and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  If
my Dad
were watching me, what would he see?  A coward?
  Is that what I really wanted?  Having anyone view me as weak or afraid never failed to piss me off.  There was a significant part of me that felt shamed by the thought that my own father might come to that conclusion if he were there, standing in that wet field with the morning mist creating a dense curtain around us.

I took a long breath, put my weight into the stirrup and slowly swung my leg over the back of the saddle.  She didn’t move a muscle.  I breathed in the heady scent of rich earth
, warm
horse
flesh
and old leather.
  The stirrup leathers squeaked against my calves in encouragement.
  I tried to cling to that familiar feeling of
being up in the air and the comfort of having a horse under me that I trusted.  That had all come from Lenny, the old chestnut draft horse that I had originally learned to ride on.  Surely that same confidence could
blossom
when I rode this horse as well.

“Alright, Messy.  Let’s go.”  I lifted the reins slightly and gave her a little squeeze with both legs.

Quite calmly, she began walking forward.  I reached down to scratch at my left calf and the right
stirrup
slipped off my boot
.  She was still moving slowly across the brown grass of the field, so I attempted to find the lost stirrup with my foot. 
My boot heel bumped her side
.  Her dark head went up, ears flicking back towards me for some direction.  Getting none, she stepped up into her running walk
and I lost the other stirrup.  Panic began to
shoot through me
.  I tried to pull her back, but she wasn’t listening.  As we got closer and closer to the fence, she sped up. 

Oh,
God.  She’s going to crash us into the fence.

“Messy, no!” I shouted, trying to hang on to the saddle horn with one hand and pull back on the reins with the other.
  It didn’t happen
in slow motion.  Maybe if it had, I would have put more thought into actually turning the horse.
 

Unfortunately, my yell encouraged her to break into a canter.  My right hand shot out towards the top rail of the fence and grabbed it hard as Messenger
executed
a left turn to avoid the crash.  Not prepared for her amazingly quick change of trajectory, I took a nos
edive into the ground after hanging for a split second on the top rail of the fence.
 
Having that short hold on the fence
took mos
t of the trauma out of the fall, but I was still down.

In shock, I watched as she trotted a few dozen feet away and then turned to look at me blankly.
  My right shoulder ached, but I didn’t seem to have any other pain.  Dead grass and dirt were caked against the crimson fibers of the front of my fleece jacket
,
and my favorite khaki baseball hat was lying in the wet grass several feet away.

Tears began to blur my sight.  I should have known I couldn’t do it.  I felt like such an idiot, assuming I could control that horse.  Maybe a big dumb plow horse, but not her.  Not a real saddle horse with top-notch training behind her.  I gripped the bill of my baseball cap and slapped it against my thigh.

“You’re a pain in my ass, horse.”
  A few tears streaked down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth.

She snorted wetly and shook her head, rattling the bit and reins.  Her breath was bright in the cool morning sunshine.
  As I began brushing off the dirt from my fall, Jackson came around the side of the barn carrying a rake.  Sadie, my Golden Retriever followed energetically. 

“Fall off?”  Jackson hesitated by the gate, his dark eyebrows rising in concern.

“Yeah.  I’m okay.”
  I took Messenger’s reins back over her head and headed towards the gate.

“You’re not getting back on?”

I looked at him.  There were things between us that had gone unsaid for a while.  Ever since Michael had been taken, we had both kept our distance.  He knew that I was holding a grudge about him being the one responsible for allowing Michael to go.  It may have been Michael’s plan all along, but Jackson knew how I felt about him.  It was hard not to think that Jackson might have done it in order to keep me for himself.

There was a world of attraction between Jackson and me.  It wasn’t just physical.
  We had both been abandoned by a parent at an early age and suffered for it.  He had spent a good deal of his life on a ranch in Wyoming and I had spent all my life on a farm in Indiana.  There was a connection
between us beyond that as well, but you wouldn’t know it
.  W
e
only
spoke to each other in the polite tone that strangers might use with each other on a public bus.

“No, I’m not getting back on.” 

“You should.  Now,” he replied evenly. “If you don’t, you may never have the guts to get close to a horse again.”

We came through the gate and Messenger shuffled aside quickly so I could close it again.  I walked up to Jackson and tossed the reins to him.  “You’re the cowboy.  You ride her.”

I went back to the house with tears drying on my cheeks and self-doubt crowding out anything positive inside my head.  If I never saw that stupid horse again, it would be fine by me.

He gave me time to cool off.  It wasn’t until after dinner that Jackson brought up what had happened.  As soon as the dinner dishes were washed and put away, I fled out to the
fire pit
and got a little blaze going.  It had been a long time since I had done that.  There was such satisfaction in seeing the first log catch and hearing the crackling of the flames.  The wind was low and blowing away from the house, so the smoke wasn’t too bad.

I was bundled up in a heavy jacket, corduroy pants and my hiking boots.  It was chilly, but I didn’t really care.  My main goal had been to get out of the house and do something that I couldn’t really fail at.  So it was a great comfort when the first flames began leaping up the sides of the bottom log before me, blue flame with orange. 
Once I had it burning well, I settled back into one of the Adirondack chairs placed in the gravel around the fire pit and stared into the flames, attempting to lose myself in the hypnotic movement of the dancing light.

“Sarah.”

I didn’t look at him.  “Come sit down.”