Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (17 page)

As much as Peg wanted to shut down after so
much her brain went into a hyper-alert state. Their lives might
just depend on her ability to see the little details that could
save them in the end. They were obviously in some sort of van, a
rather spacious one, but old judging by the worn interior. Peg
looked around to see what she had crashed into and saw a cage.
Actually, there were four cages. Each one was a cube about three
feet on a side, and unlike the van they seemed new and highly
polished. They also smelled like they’d been rubbed down with
garlic. There was so little room that two of the cages had been
stacked on the others. As Peg’s eyes went up to look at the cages
on top she realized the roof was lined with lights, although she
couldn’t yet guess why.

“Do not make us repeat any of this,” one of
the creatures said to them both. “If I have to repeat or you fight
I will harm the other one. You understand.”

It was a statement more than a question, but
Peg figured it would be a good idea to nod anyway. Zoey just
stared.

“Do not try to run. Do not disobey. Do not
try to harm us. If you do I will remove a piece of your sister. You
understand.”

Peg looked over at Zoey. She expected to see
terror on her sister’s face, but she just seemed resigned. “I
understand.”

The second creature pointed at Zoey. “You. In
a cage now.”

Zoey looked at the cage. Now she showed some
of that missing fear. “No, please. I’ll go. I won’t do
anything.”

The first creature slammed Peg against the
wall of the van before she could even put her arms up in defense.
With equal speed it bent down, grabbed her by the left foot, and
ripped off a shoe and sock. It tossed them to the side. “Do it
now.”

“No,” Zoey said again. “Please. I’ll be
good…”

White-hot agony ripped through Peg’s foot,
and despite every attempt to maintain some kind of composure Peg
screamed. On some level she thought maybe that was a good thing,
like someone outside might be able to hear, but that wasn’t likely.
All of this so far had been happening outside in the open and no
one had done anything. Whatever trick these two had used on V, is
was entirely likely that they could do something similar against
anyone who got close enough to be curious and just send the person
on their way none the wiser.

Peg looked down at her foot. Her little toe
was missing and blood poured from the wound. The scene was so
unexpected, so absurd, that she actually let out a brief, staccato
laugh before the pain hit her brain again and it was all she could
do to keep her screams down to nothing more than a whimpering
moan.

The creature that had ripped off her toe held
it up where Peg could plainly see it and then, in a scene so
bizarre and horrific that it was only beat by the tableau she’d
seen earlier in her fridge, opened its mouth wide and popped the
toe in. It couldn’t chew the toe, since it didn’t have a tongue or
even the inside of a mouth to hold it in place, but Peg could
clearly see as the toe landed on the mess of gore inside its head
where the beginning of the esophagus should have been. It made a
swallowing motion with its throat, and the bizarre misshapen flesh
folded itself over the toe. The thing closed its mouth and then
opened it wide again right in front of Peg’s face as though to say
See? All gone
.

Peg felt she should have been more upset that
some kind of abomination had just eaten a piece of her, but by this
point most of her emotional mind had shut down in self defense,
leaving only a kind of scientific fascination behind in its
place.

“Get in the cage,” the second creature said
to Zoey again. With an incoherent but obviously frightened mutter
she finally did what she was told. It slammed the cage door shut
behind her then locked it with a padlock remarkably similar to the
one Peg had used on the basement door back home.
Well that’s not
going to work
, Peg thought smugly, but she made sure to keep
any indication of her thinking to herself.

“Now you,” the first creature said, pointing
at the cage right next to Zoey’s. Peg wanted to just spit in what
passed for its face, but she knew that if she showed any defiance
she probably would not be the one paying the price this time. She
looked over at Zoey hunched over in her too-small cage. The sight
reminded her of those horrible Humane Society commercials, the ones
where beaten, abused and scab-ridden dogs were shown crammed
together in rusting metal kennels while Sarah McLaughlin music
played incongruously in the background.

Zoey, I swear to you that I will get you
out of here this time
, Peg thought, then hunched over and
crawled into her own cage.

The back of the van
was windowless, and a thick dark curtain separated it from the
front. Peg was prepared to spend their journey to—well, wherever
they might be going—in total darkness, but soon after the two
creatures went into the front the van rumbled to life and the back
compartment flooded with light. For a moment Peg shielded her eyes
and wondered if something had ripped off the top of the van, but
when she forced herself to look up she realized the light was
coming from multiple lamps wired to the ceiling. The quality of the
light seemed odd until Peg realized why the lamps had to be there.
They were UV lights. They were meant to simulate the sun. Even if
sunlight didn’t kill a vampire like in the stories, it at least
appeared Zoey didn’t like it. Zoey hid her eyes and started
scratching at her skin like she was covered in fleas. Peg wished
she would stop. Just looking at her gave Peg sympathy itches.

As the van started to lurch (whichever one of
the creatures was driving didn’t seem to be very good at it) the
enormity and the horror of her situation finally started to dawn on
Peg. To the rest of the world she had just vanished as quickly and
quietly as Zoey eleven years ago. V knew what had happened, or at
least part of it depending on how much she could remember after
snapping out of her trance, but there wasn’t much for V to do. She
would have enough trouble explaining to the authorities how she
came to be in possession of Brendan while Peg was now gone and Tony
was dead. If she managed to get out of being the prime suspect then
she still only had the vaguest notion of where to start looking for
Peg. Or V could always go with the last remaining option and try to
convince everyone that a vampire-thing had done this. Peg could
guess how that would go.

The enormity of everything was almost too
much. Peg could feel the way her mind wanted to shut down, to give
in to the fear and despair, to just lie down in her cage and let
everything else from this point on just happen.

Oh hell no. Like I’m going to let you do
that, bitch
, the voice in her head said.
Just stay with me
for a second and look over there. Tell me exactly what you
see
.

Peg turned as best as she could—t wasn’t easy
in the closed confines of the cage—and looked at Zoey. Pretty,
forever nineteen Zoey, curled up on the floor of her cage. Peg
would say that this was the posture of someone that had given up
long ago, but it occurred to Peg that this was untrue. Zoey’s mind
and sanity was obviously swiss-cheesed beyond any normal kind of
repair. Whatever she had seen in eleven years, the exact same thing
they were likely going to right now, it had damaged her deeply. And
yet she had escaped. She had found a way. Zoey might not have been
in the condition to repeat the feat, but that only meant that it
was Peg’s turn. Peg owed her that.

“Zoey,” Peg whispered, mindful not to attract
too much attention from the two in the front. They could probably
hear her anyway, but she hoped they didn’t actually expect much
from either Peg or Zoey and ignored them both. “Psst. Hey,
Zoey.”

Zoey’s only movement was to curl up into a
tighter ball.

“Zoey, please. Don’t shut down on me now. I’m
going to need you to stay with me.”

Zoey said nothing.

That’s okay
, the voice said.
Maybe
she’ll be more responsive later. For now you know what you need to
do, right? You’ve talked about this with your therapist. That
hyperawareness thing
.

Yes. Peg took a deep breath and tried to calm
her racing thoughts. The night of Zoey’s disappearance was
permanently burned into her head, every detail no matter how
inconsequential recorded against her will. It was supposedly a side
effect of the trauma, or some other psychobabble like that. The
point was that she had done it subconsciously at the time but that
her mind was still capable of it. She needed that now. She needed
to record every single detail, on purpose this time. There was no
telling what element of the situation might be the one she would
need to survive this.

The first order of business, she guessed, was
to make sure she wasn’t going to bleed to death. Her bare ruined
foot had left a long bloody streak on the van’s floor and it
glistened in the van’s harsh light, but it was difficult in her
current position to get a good look at the foot itself. She’d
crawled into the cage on her hands and knees, a position she was
still in, and shifting enough to view the foot was a tricky
proposition in such a small space. It took nearly a minute of
shifting and grunting before she had managed to turn around and sit
in a way that would allow her to inspect herself. She put the foot
up against the side of the cage to get a better look but then
immediately put it down with a hiss. Besides the garlic and silver
for vampires the creatures must have coated the bars with something
else for normal people, because she felt a burning pain where her
skin touched the metal. If the entire cage was like that this would
be a very uncomfortable journey.

Being sure to stay away from the bars this
time Peg held up her foot to look at it. At this point she didn’t
feel any particular feelings one way or the other at the loss of
her toe. She supposed that was probably a sign that she was in
shock, but on the list of world-flipping things that had happened
to her over the last two days a pinkie toe getting eaten was
somehow rather low on the list. The good news was that it didn’t
appear to be bleeding. Drying blood coated her foot and it still
hurt something fierce, but it looked like it might already be
clotting. Good. She had more important things to worry about for
now.

She did her best to pay attention to the way
the van moved and the sounds outside, hoping it might give her some
clues to their location as they went. There’d been a lot of turning
around and stopping and starting as she’d checked her foot, which
she had to assume was them trying to get out of the parking lot.
The ride was smoother now, which implied to Peg that they were out
on the road, but there was no way she could guess which direction
they might be going. If her earlier theories were right they would
be heading north soon. The smart thing for these creatures to do if
they didn’t want to attract attention would be to take the lesser
used county roads once they got out of town, although she supposed
they didn’t have to be smart. If a cop pulled them over for
something suspicious they could just use their brain whammy on him
or her and convince the cop to let them go. For that same reason
Peg had to assume that no one else would be able to help, even if
the van pulled over somewhere within someone’s earshot and she
tried to yell for help. It also occurred to her that she still had
her cell phone in her pants pocket, but after some awkward wiggling
to get it out she found that it wasn’t getting a signal. That made
sense. Peg expected them to take the phone from her shortly, but
even before that they had probably modified the van by lining it
with something that would block service.

“Zoey,” Peg tried again as she again
repositioned herself, this time to get a better look at the lock on
the outside of the cage. Trying not to touch the bars Peg reached
her fingers through to touch the lock, just making sure that their
captors hadn’t left it open by mistake. As soon as she touched it
she got the same unpleasant pain as when she’d touched the bars.
She had no clue what was causing that, but she had an idea that
figuring it out could be a key clue in how to get out of here.

Zoey stirred in her cage. Peg noticed that
she was just as careful not to touch the bars. She’d probably
already learned her lesson about that a long time ago.

“I’m sorry,” Zoey said.

“Don’t be sorry. We can get out of this.”

“No.”

“Yes we can. You did it before, didn’t you?
How did you do it?”

“Someone else was screaming. Trying to resist
a combination of things. The minion who was feeding me went to
help. Left my door open.”

Peg frowned. That sounded like the kind of
mistake their captors would be careful not to make a second time.
“Where was this? It wasn’t in this van, was it?”

“Underground.”

“But underground where? Zoey, you need to
give me every detail you possibly can. It’s the only way we can
possibly find a way out.”

“There’s no way. I’m ripe. They’ll plant a
seed and eventually you’ll be ripe too.”

“Zoey, damn it, please. You have to
concentrate and tell me. We don’t have any more time for riddles.
What exactly is going to happen to us?”

Zoey sighed. “I already said.”

“Said what?”

“Animals eat plants. Humans eat animals.
Vampires eat humans.”

“Which means what?”

Zoey finally looked her in the eye. “Peg,
don’t you wonder?”

“Wonder what?”

“What eats vampires?”

Peg held her breath, waiting for an answer
that Zoey didn’t seem to want to give. “What does eat vampires,
Zoey?”

Zoey looked away. “A combination of
things.”