Evolution (24 page)

“Because I like to.” He laughed at my expression. “Not what you wanted to hear, I know. But it’s the truth.”

I sighed and turned toward the door. I was so done here. There were enough sadistic assholes in my life.

“Don’t you want to see your friend?”

“Friend?”

Hane threw the blanket off and got up from the couch. His smile made me think of someone who could kill puppies with no remorse. “I’m sure Joel will be thrilled to see you. He’s certainly been lacking in visitors.”

My whole world seemed to stop. “Joel? He’s here?”

Hane led me to the stairs, down and to the locked gate. “Bottom of the stairs, through the door and to the left. He’s chained to the wall, so don’t worry.” He opened the gate and motioned me inside.

The darkness was thicker here. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened easily enough, but it was heavy, metal maybe? The smell of blood hit me the second the door swung outward. Was he hurt? Oh God. “Joel?”

Nothing. It was warm down here too. The air was stale. Maybe there were no windows? A maze of halls spanned out from the door. I turned left and passed many open, barren rooms. The one at the end was closed. Was that where I’d find Joel? A single sconce flickered pale light in an almost monstrous glow. The metal of this door was more like something out of a prison: heavy steel frame, a small window to look through, and a large handle that rolled a bar lock into place.

I had to use all my weight to get the handle to move, but the door finally creaked open. The smell nearly knocked me flat. Not blood this time, but filth. Oh God.

“Joel?” The light fell on his face, and he cringed away. Chains rattled. I stepped inside to try to see him better. “Joel?”

He growled an inhuman sound at me, and the sound of metal grinding almost made me put my hands over my ears. He must have moved closer because the stench increased. I stepped back, retreating to the room entrance. Maybe there was another light somewhere? Water, even. I could help him, treat him better than the animal that they made him out to be.

“He’s hungry,” a voice said from behind me.

I spun around to face Hane. “Crap!”

He smiled, looking ghoulish in the harsh light. How did everyone not see though him?

“Is there a way to get more light in here? Water, maybe? It smells awful. You can’t treat him like this.” You can’t treat anyone like this and expect them to be human after they came out.

“He didn’t come over right. None of this matters to him.” Hane leaned over and touched something on the wall that made the room erupt into bright light. Fluorescents overhead buzzed to life. The room was little more than a ten by ten box. No windows, just the door, a mess of human excrement and blood, and a friend chained to the floor.

Joel’s keening cry made me cringe. I didn’t want to look at what he’d become, but I had to. He needed someone to care for him, and he’d always cared about me. The once self-confident ladies’ man huddled over his knees, clothes torn ragged and stained. His skin had an awful white pallor that must have meant death. Though he still had yet to look at me, I knew he and Kerstrande were a billion times different.

“Water?” I finally asked, knowing Hane hadn’t left.

“He can’t drink it.”

“But he can be washed. Did you keep Kerstrande down here, tied up like an unwanted dog too?” My anger built wave upon wave as I examined the conditions of this cage. The silence that responded to my question was worse than a resounding yes. How long had he kept KC here?

“Until he would kill.”

Monster.

“Yes.”

“Stay out of my head,” I yelled at him. He stood so close I should have felt fear, but there was nothing but the rage. “Get me water or get out.”

He stepped back. “The door on the right leads to a bathroom and a cleaning closet. Light switch on the wall. Come back up when you want out.” He vanished down the hall while I made my way to the bathroom. A full bucket of water and some mostly clean rags would be a good start. The only soap was an antiseptic hand soap. Better than nothing, I guess.

I returned to the room, dragging the bucket of suds-filled water. Joel was testing his chains. His feet, hands, and neck were all bound. Dark black bruising bloomed from around each link. Obviously it hurt him, but he still yanked at them. The floor was stained with dried blood and other things. I sighed, got a mop, and began to clean. No point in cleaning him up until his surrounding “cage” was clean.

After a while, Joel stopped straining against the chains and sat down to watch. His eyes looked so blank and empty. His playful light was gone. Was there anything left of my friend? His blond hair stood up in many areas, streaked with dried blood. His eyes looked huge and shattered, his face like something out of a zombie movie, minus the whole brains-dripping-off-his-face thing.

Once the floor around him was clean, I approached him with a bit more caution. He backed away as far as the chains would allow, but I couldn’t let myself forget that he was a vampire now. Kerstrande never showed me that side of himself. He was always in such control. But they could kill. I’d watched Hane tear Michael into little pieces with his bare hands.

Joel seemed so lost, his aura dim, but none of those shadows seemed to have him yet. I wondered if he would attack me? Hane said he was hungry. Did that mean he’d been purposely starved? Was Hane setting me up to be murdered by my friend?

Too late to back out now. Joel needed me. I shook all the thoughts out of my head and got back to work. Was there anything else for him to wear? He was not going to continue to sit in those rags. He’d probably been wearing them for weeks. The Joel I knew would be humiliated.

Returning to the bathroom, I dumped the bucket, washed it out, and refilled it with clean water. When I approached him this time, he didn’t cringe away; instead he just stared at me, eyes wide. Maybe he recognized me.

“Hey, Joel. Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” I washed his face first, scrubbing gently at the pale lines that ran down his cheeks. They looked like tearstains, and after I washed the dirt away, he seemed a little better. He let me squeeze the water over his head and even squirt some soap in his hair. I didn’t care much about the water ruining his clothes. I’d burn them later if possible. It just seemed so important to make him human again, even if he never would be.

“We’ve really missed you in the band. Rob did some things… unforgivable things.” But then, everyone said Joel murdered his parents. If attempted rape wasn’t forgivable, how could murder be? I sucked in a deep breath. My grandfather would have said that all things in this life prepare us for the next. Nothing was really a sin, not like in Christian theology; it was just bad Karma. Some things weighed more than others, kept us from progressing. Good karma did the opposite. Perhaps. Even if others weren’t able to forgive the things they had done, they could still get closer to enlightenment, peace, acceptance, in another life. Maybe I could help Joel find a better path. Hane said he’d come over wrong. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but maybe I could help him. Fix whatever was broken. I could at least try. That was more than everyone else seemed willing to do.

When I reached across to pull off his shirt, he sunk his teeth into my arm with an ease of biting into a tomato. It stung, but I didn’t dare pull away. His teeth would have shredded my skin. He sucked on the wound, licking at any escaping blood. I sat back and just let him drink for a while. Who knew how long Hane had starved him? Only when I started to feel a little light-headed did I pull away. Joel still clung tight.

“Hey, let me go now. You’ve had enough,” I told him with soft words. He glanced at me only briefly but didn’t loosen his hold. Panic began to set in. What if he killed me? He wouldn’t mean to—he didn’t seem to understand anything I said—but I felt heat rising in my blood. Would I change? Somehow I didn’t think that would help Joel or myself. “Stop!”

His grip let go, and he flinched away like a battered dog. I used one of the last dry rags to bandage the wound and went to work undressing him, cutting most everything off, and washing him. He sat docile now, unlike I’d ever known Joel to have been, while I bathed him head to toe, even scrubbing the chains that bound him. He didn’t try to attack again, though my neck was bared and close to him. I must have been down there for several hours, but it passed so fast I barely noticed. At least the place didn’t look so much like a prison for someone to be left to die in. And Joel, while still pale, didn’t seem nearly as dead now that he was clean and functioning off of my blood.

“Still alive down here?” Hane asked suddenly from the doorway. “I’m surprised. He’s slaughtered anyone I’ve brought to him in the last week. Made a total mess out of eating. More blood on the floor than in him.”

“I want to take him home with me.”

Hane’s laugh was sharp and bitter. “Kerstrande would kill him the second he arrived. But maybe you like the murderous side of your boyfriend.”

“At least undo the chains so I can tend his wounds.”

“He’ll heal.”

Not under Hane’s care, dammit. “He’s my friend.”

“I’ll tell your boyfriend that when he shows up to claim your corpse.” Hane stalked across the room and unlocked the chains. The last link clunked to the ground, and Hane moved across the room too fast to see, then stepped out the door and slammed it shut. “Pound when you want out,” he said into the panel in the door then slammed it shut, laughing as he walked away.

Joel and I faced each other with him hunched on his heels, staring at me with an odd expression. I shrugged off my sweater and pulled it over his head. He didn’t seem to remember how to wear it, but it covered him nearly to his knees. I suppose it was good he only had two inches on me. Kerstrande wouldn’t mind that I lent out his sweater. I hoped.

How often did new vampires need to feed? Crap, I had to be able to do more than this for him.

There was a cot in the corner, tipped over and thrown around. I set it right, but the linens were dirty. I sighed. At least the mattress looked fairly clean. “Come here,” I told Joel, patting the mattress. After a moment, he inched forward, finally coming to a stop beside me in front of the bed. “Aren’t you tired?” I asked him.

He raised a hand, and I thought for a moment he meant to hit me, but he touched my hair, in fact seemed to be petting it.

“Are you okay?” I whispered to him.

He sighed and sat down on the bed, then lay back, putting his face to the wall. I went to the door and pounded on it. Hane took a good ten minutes to answer. He stood like a wall in front of me, eyebrow raised.

I shoved the dirty blankets at him. “Clean linens?”

He threw them outside the door and stepped back to point at a small door beside the bathroom I hadn’t noticed before. Inside were clean blankets and pillows. I dug out a stack and brought them to Joel, covered him with the blanket to his chin, and tucked a pillow beneath his head.

“Be good,” I whispered to him. “When Hane tells you to drink, just take a little, and don’t kill anyone else, okay?”

Joel blinked at me but seemed to have heard. I headed for the door.

“Taming the beast, eh?” Hane said as he pulled the door shut behind us and relocked it. “He’ll tear that room apart again in a few hours.”

“He’s not an animal.”

Hane pressed his face in close to mine, his dark eyes seeming to glow in the once again dim lighting. He snapped off the light switch for the room. “We are all animals, kid. Some of us just have visible fangs.”

“I’ll be back for Joel. And stay away from Kerstrande. He’s mine.” I turned my back on him and stomped back to the main stairway and up to the gate. Letting a vampire have my back probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could do, but I really wanted to hurt him. Some things were worth the bad karma. I just didn’t have that kind of power. At least not yet.

Hane grabbed my arm in a nearly bone-crunching grip. “Maybe you should stay. Since you’re giving out blood today.”

“Not to you.”

“I don’t think you have a choice.” He backed me against the wall. “Michael wanted you. That’s why he engaged Kerstrande in a fight. Kerstrande doesn’t like to share, but to kill Michael meant taking on the monster inside of him. Your cowardly boyfriend couldn’t do it, so I had to.” Hane’s eyes flickered with some other personality, and blackness began to enshroud him. “He eats at me now. Telling me to take you, rip out your throat, and display your insides for Kerstrande to see.”

“But you won’t.”

“What’s to stop me?” He yanked my head to one side, baring my neck.

I smiled, letting the heat that had been building come to the surface with my anger. Was that how it worked? His hand on my arm began to smoke, and his expression changed to one of pain.

“Powerful little shit,” he said but didn’t release me. “No wonder Petterson has it so bad for you. Like fucking a volcano, I bet.”

His teeth grazed my neck when I felt the anger rise up in me with the force of a wrecking ball. He wanted to do this just to hurt Kerstrande. I was just a means to an end. But I wasn’t about to be another hanger-on to hurt KC.

A red glow flowed around my skin. My hand seared into his chest where I was pushing him away, filling the hallway with the stench of burning flesh. He screamed and shoved me away, hard enough to send me flying several feet. I sucked in a heavy breath and felt the fire surrounding me.

Hane rolled around the ground, screaming and flailing. The fire grew in intensity while I stared at him and let my anger free, thinking about how he had treated KC. It was Joel’s face, peering through the tiny open slat in his door that made me reel back and stop. His eyes were wide, fearful. My heart pounded, but the fire stopped as though I’d just turned it off. What had I done?

Chapter 27