Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) (15 page)

“I can’t imagine how you expected me to react when you claim that you plan to kill me,” I bit out, wishing I could shrug off his hands. His touch made my skin crawl.

“It was not my intention to threaten or frighten you.” Vanko’s hands moved, squeezing my shoulders in a light massage before sliding away. He returned to chair and his expression was a mask of sincerity that I wasn’t buying. “You have been brought here for your own protection.”

“Protection from whom?”

“Mira, of course,” Vanko said earnestly. “She means to kill you.”

“Mira wouldn’t hurt me. She has no reason to hurt me.”

Vanko shook his head, giving me a pitying look that I wanted to smack off his face. Or maybe I would just throw my soup on him. It wasn’t as if I was going to eat it now. “Mira doesn’t need a reason. Mira likes to kill for fun, but killing you would have a purpose. It would hurt Stefan and she wishes to weaken him before she removes him from the Coven.”

I clenched my teeth together to hold back my words of disbelief. Did I know Mira? No. Did I understand all of her motivations? Definitely not. I wouldn’t pretend to, but I had a good understanding of Danaus from our afternoon together. There wasn’t an ounce of guile in the man. He just didn’t believe in it. If Mira wanted me dead, Danaus would have made that clear. There would have been no pretending.

But arguing that point with Vanko would get me nowhere. “Then why are you protecting me? What are you getting out of this?”

“I am an old friend of Stefan’s,” he said with what I was sure he thought was a pleasant smile, but it looked more like a gnashing of his teeth. I didn’t believe a word he said. “He sent me to fetch you and secret you out of the city. The best time to do that would be during the day when all the nightwalkers were unconscious. He also couldn’t risk Mira suspecting that he knows the truth.”

“And why didn’t Stefan tell me about his plan?”

“He couldn’t risk anyone reading it from your mind ahead of time. He discovered Mira’s plot last night and couldn’t take any risks. He only wants you safe.”

Bullshit
. Stefan knew that nightwalkers couldn’t read my mind. I was broken and this asshole was lying. But for now, I had to play along. It gave me the chance to get more information and possibly find a way of escaping. “Th-thank you,” I said with a waver in my voice that I didn’t have to fake. “So much has happened recently. I don’t know who to trust. I thought Mira was trying to help me.”

“It’s understandable,” Vanko said with a benevolent and smug look. “You are simply overwhelmed by everything.”

Raising a shaking hand, I threaded some hair behind my ear. “Yes. But if you’re planning to protect me, why did you say that you were going to kill me?”

“Because the most effective way to protect you from Mira is to make you a nightwalker. That requires your death.”

My heart stopped in my chest and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. He was planning to turn me. I tried to shake my head, to say something to indicate that such a thing was the last thing in the world I wanted, but my brain was locked up at the thought. This was definitely not Stefan’s doing. He would have told me, prepared me, if he thought I needed to be secreted out of Italy for my own safety. This was all wrong. Not once had he brought up the idea that he might wish for me to become a nightwalker. He’d never even brought it up as a kind of worse-case scenario.

But what could I do? If I revealed that I didn’t believe a word this nightwalker was saying, would he then kill me? He was planning to do that already, but at least I’d come back as a nightwalker his way. Life as a nightwalker meant that I could escape. Death was permanent. There was no escape.

Even so, I wasn’t letting him turn me without a fight.

“I don’t understand. How is becoming a nightwalker going to protect me from Mira?”

“Being a nightwalker makes you subject to our laws. As a human, you’re not. She would face no punishment for killing you as a human. There are consequences for killing a nightwalker.”

My mind was screaming bullshit, but I was keeping my disbelief from my face. Considering how much the other nightwalkers had been afraid of Mira at that coven meeting, I was sure that the threat of punishment would not stop Mira from killing a nightwalker if that was what she wanted.

My hands gripped the edge of the table to keep me in place when I longed to make another dash for the front door. Of course, Vanko had proven once that I’d never make it. I focused on organizing my thoughts while shoving down my panic. There had to be something that I could do, some way that I could escape this asshole and reach someone who could help me.

“When are you planning to kill me?” I asked calmly, keeping my eyes locked on the bowl of soup in front of me.

“Tonight.”

“Can you wait… until tomorrow… please?”

“I am sorry, Erin, but it is too dangerous to wait.”

“I understand, but I need time to prepare. I… I want to see the sun one last time. I mean, there’s no going back, right? Once you turn me, I’ll never see the sun again. I’m sure you can protect me for one more night and then I can be turned.” I paused and gave him what I hoped was a frightened look while trying to look utterly meek and trusting.

Vanko had the same look on his face that Stefan got when he was trying to read my mind. His frown deepened and for the first time in my life, I was grateful for that damn car wreck that made it impossible for nightwalker to read me. He looked pissed, but I had a feeling he was starting to weaken.

That’s right. Underestimate me, motherfucker. Humans are stupid, trusting cows. We don’t have a thought in our heads.

“As you wish, but you must remain within the house during the night. It is too dangerous for you to be out while the sun is down.”

“I understand,” I said, trying to look meek and frightened. The frightened part wasn’t too hard to manage, but my mounting rage was getting in the way of my meek. “I just want to see the sun one last time.”

I’d managed to buy myself some time and that was the best commodity right now. With time, I could come up with an escape plan. Also, the daylight hours meant that I was up against only humans. They had the same strengths and weaknesses as me. Nightwalkers diminished my odds of survival substantially. There was no chance of overcoming them physically.

The man who had shoved me into the house initially returned, his expression frighteningly blank. Was Vanko controlling him? The nightwalker hadn’t called for the man or otherwise signaled for him to come to the room. At least, not that I noticed.

“Otto will show you to a room where you can sleep. He will allow you to walk in the sun tomorrow,” Vanko said with a wave of his hand, dismissing me from his sight.

Before I could push to my feet, Otto closed the distance between us and yanked me out of my chair. Vanko said nothing as I was roughly marched out of the room and up the creaking stairs to a small room with a twin mattress on the floor. A couple thin blankets were strewed carelessly on the floor. They weren’t much but they’d help combat the chill that had been biting at me since I’d woken up in the car.

Otto slammed the door shut behind me and I finally breathed a sigh of relief, collapsing on the old mattress. I was exhausted, my head ached, and I was terrified. Everything in my gut said that Stefan had absolutely nothing to do with this. My lover might not be the most forthcoming when it came to providing me with information about his people, but he would have said something about this, he would have given some kind of indication that he didn’t trust Mira.

Unfortunately, if Stefan wasn’t behind my kidnapping, then it was very likely that he discovered the hard way that I wasn’t in Venice any longer. He’d be worried, potentially tearing through the city as he searched for me. Would he be upset with Mira and Danaus? Would he blame them for my disappearance?

But what if Vanko was the nightwalker who was trying to manipulate Stefan and who was behind Sabrina’s murder? It would help Stefan more if I discovered Vanko’s plans or even if Vanko was the one truly out to get Stefan.
And exactly how was I supposed to avoid Vanko’s plans to murder me for another night while I snooped on him?

Sitting on the floor with my back pressed against the wall, I pounded my head on the wall, cursing Vanko, nightwalkers in general, and myself. What the hell was I supposed to do? I needed to get out of here and find a way to contact either Stefan or Danaus. But how? It wasn’t like I could just call up Stefan since he never gave me a cell phone number. Hell, I’d never even seen him use a phone. He might not even have one. I didn’t have a phone number for Danaus or Mira, even though I’d seen them use cell phones. Damn it, I didn’t even know their last names. Of course, I was beginning to seriously doubt that nightwalkers had last names.

Hell. So what were my options if I did escape? Go back to Venice and try to find Stefan, Danaus, Mira, or Knox? Try to find another nightwalker who might be able to help me? That wasn’t exactly a smart idea. Other than the fact that I might be viewed as dinner, I could very easily find someone who wasn’t a fan of Mira or Stefan, putting me back in the hands of someone who wanted to hurt me, such as Carla.

Of course, I could just say fuck all the vampires and go home after I escaped from Vanko. Knowing Stefan had put me at the center of a murder investigation and nearly gotten me killed before I was kidnapped and secreted away to only God knows where, a smart person would cut their losses and get the fuck out of Dodge. I was beginning to seriously doubt my intelligence considering that going home wasn’t my first thought.

Running back to America with my tail tucked between my legs might be the smart choice, but it didn’t feel good. I didn’t want to leave Stefan in the dark as to what happened to me. He’d nearly lost his mind with worry when I’d been caught after dark in the St. Mark Square and he’d arranged for my protection from other nightwalkers. Asking Mira for help certainly hadn’t been an easy thing for him. Stefan didn’t intend for me to get drawn into all of this crap. He needed to at least know that I was safe… when I was finally safe again.

Wrapping one of the somewhat stinky blankets around my shoulders and arms, I pushed back to my feet and started a slow inspection of the small, empty room. Other than the mattress and the blankets, the other only object in the room was a bucket that I was assuming was for my bathroom use.
Fabulous.
There was a small window looking out into the thickening darkness. Woods crowded close to the back of the house, confirming that I really was out in the middle of nowhere.

I continued to search the room several more times for anything that might have been hidden or that I’d stupidly overlooked, but there wasn’t anything. Sighing, I curled up on the mattress and closed my eyes. Sleep was better than driving myself crazy during the night. A human couldn’t beat a conscious nightwalker. Sleep was better. It kept the dark, hopeless thoughts at bay. It gave me strength for when my opportunity finally appeared. I wasn’t going to get a second chance at this.

Chapter 11

Heavy footsteps pounded on the stairs the next morning. Bright sunlight streamed through the dirty windows, causing my eyes to ache and burn. There was no question about where I was or how I’d gotten there. Vanko and Otto were never far from my mind at any time. Most of the night had been passed by staring at the window while tossing around different ideas of how to break free. I didn’t come up with a lot that sounded good, but it was better than nothing.

My sleeplessness hadn’t been helped by the fact that I thought I heard Stefan’s voice whispering in my head. The words had been indistinct and seemed to disappear completely when I concentrated too hard, but they sounded like they had when he’d used telepathy. A strangled sob raked at my throat at the sound of his voice in my head. I didn’t know whether I was making it up because I wanted him to search for me. I prayed he was, but there was nothing I could do to help him. My brain was broken. Nightwalkers couldn’t read my thoughts, which offered a small layer of protection, but then I also couldn’t answer Stefan’s call.

Otto threw open the door with a loud bang as I reached my feet, the blanket still wrapped tight around my shoulders. He barked something at me, but it was unintelligible. The man apparently didn’t speak a word of English. It didn’t matter. The gun he waved at me made his intent perfectly clear. Get moving or I’m going to blow a hole in you. Vanko might have other plans for me, but I wasn’t going to press my luck. Otto didn’t appear to be the brightest bulb in the pack.

Sadly, I hadn’t counted on my captor being armed. Neither Otto nor his companion used a gun the previous day, but then they’d kept me tied most if the time. There had been no need. The bastard was taking no chances. That was fine. It just meant that I wasn’t going to try to bash his skull in while we were alone together. I’d just have to go with Plan B.

With my head held high, I marched out of my room and down the stairs to the main foyer. Sunlight didn’t improve the appearance of my prison. The paint on the walls was faded and stained from years of wear and neglect. There was no furniture or decorations. In fact, I had a feeling that this place had been abandoned until Vanko and his companions had shown up.

At Otto’s prodding, I stepped out the open front door and gasped softly at the cold bite in the morning air. Wrapping my blanket more tightly around my shoulders, I carefully walked down the worn stairs to the cracked and overgrown sidewalk. I swallowed a small chuckle as I looked up at the exterior of the old two-story house. Despite all my bitching and moaning, my apartment in Venice with its leaky roof and broken heater was starting to look really appealing.

Pausing on the sidewalk, I turned my face up to the sun and took a deep breath, soaking in what little warmth I could gain from its cheerful rays. But then Otto was prodding me again. We walked around the house four times. He allowed me to maintain a slow gait while I carefully inspected the woods that surrounded the crumbling house on three sides. The woods were relatively thick and dark. Only the faintest hints of green could be seen among the shades of brown. An unsettling silence filled the air as if nature had not yet woken from its winter slumber. I hoped that was the reason at least. I didn’t want to think it was because they knew a nightwalker was currently sleeping in the house.

When I tried to walk around the house a fifth time, Otto angrily grunted and shoved me back toward the stairs. I stumbled, releasing the blanket so I could catch myself on the stairs in front of me. Throwing the man a dirty look, which he completely ignored, I wrapped the blanket back around me and carefully returned to the house.

Locked back in my room, I quickly used the can before I flopped back down on the mattress. But it was hard to stay still. The urge to flee was overwhelming. Vanko was trapped inside until after the sun set and he was my biggest concern. It was early in the morning, but minutes were ticking steadily away from me. I needed to be as far from this place as possible when Vanko awakened.

Sitting on the mattress, I strained to hear all the noises in the house, trying to judge where Otto and his companion were when the car engine suddenly roared to life.

Jumping to my feet, I swallowed back my heart and listened. Someone was leaving. Was it Otto? Or his companion? I hadn’t seen him since we arrived so I couldn’t be sure that he was still in the house. The other man could have stayed in town rather than this cold and dreary place where he could possibly be made into dinner.

I hesitated. Do I run now and risk being captured by one of the humans who had already grabbed me once? Or do I waste time worrying about someone I wasn’t sure was even watching me? Run or play it safe?

In the end, I said fuck it. I had to take a chance because I might not get another shot at this. Dropping the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I grabbed the corner of the mattress and dragged it over to the old window in the wooden frame. Careful inspection the night before had revealed that the window had been nailed shut. Leaning a portion of the thin mattress against the window and tried to put my elbow through the glass using the mattress as both protection and as a way of muffling the sound if there was anyone in the house and conscious.

It wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies. After a couple tries, I shifted approaches and put my shoulder into the mattress, leveraging more of my body weight. On the second attempt, there was a crackling sound as the old glass splintered and broke. The mattress pushed through the opening as the glass fell to the ground outside. Cringing where I stood, I waited and listened for the sound of approaching footsteps, but either no one heard or there was no one there to hear my escape.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I returned to the task of pushing the mattress through the opening while trying to also push out the jagged pieces that remained in the frame. The mattress landed on the ground with a heavy thud and I frowned. It had landed funny on the way down and bounced slightly away from the house so that it wasn’t as close as I was hoping it would be. Hitting the mattress on the way down wasn’t going to be an easy thing.

Wadding up one of the blankets, I tossed it out of the window. I folded up the second and laid it over the window to protect myself from the broken glass fragments that remained as I climbed out the window. My heart was pounding like a thing gone mad and my breath broke from my parted lips in desperate pants. What if I landed wrong and broke my ankle or my leg? How was I going to get away then?

Shoving the thought aside, I put one leg over the open window and then braced myself as I sat on the blanket and threw the other leg out the window. Jagged pieces of glass scratched my arms and legs through my clothes. I took a deep breath and then another, focusing on pushing away far enough to land on the mattress. I’d hit the padding and immediately roll. That’s what they did when skydiving right? They hit the ground and rolled to break the fall. Or was that something else I was thinking of. Oh... fuck it.

Clenching my teeth to hold back a scream, I jumped from the two-story window and hit the bottom half of the mattress. I tried to roll, but it wasn’t very good. It was more of a fall and stumble. Pain shot through my knees on the impact, but I didn’t break anything. Tears of relief filled my eyes but I blinked them back and focused on the next part of my escape — get the hell away from the house.

Grabbing up the blanket that I’d thrown out the window as well as the one that I’d pulled off the window after me, I headed straight into the woods. While running along the road would have been easily and faster, I risked being seen by one of my kidnappers should they return to the house. For now, I needed to stay hidden.

Concealed by the dense woods, I paused to wrap the blankets around me to fight off the cold before I resumed my jog. For the better part of an hour, I tried to run straight before finally turning toward my left. My hope was that I was running parallel to the road. But I wasn’t sure. There was no sign of the road from where I was. In fact, there was no sign of civilization at all. No lights or sounds from cars and people. But I kept moving, telling myself that I’d have to reach help eventually. Someone would be able to put me in contact with the authorities who could get me to a U.S. embassy.

I ran in bursts whenever I found myself a patch of somewhat open, even ground. For the most part, I could achieve only a brisk walk as I picked my way through heavy overgrown. The woods were silent except for me. There were no birds singing and no squirrels scurrying through the brush in search of food. The silence was grating, leaving my imagination free to wander. I felt as if Vanko’s eyes were already on me even though the sun was still high in the sky. Every so often I would pause and listen, straining to hear the footsteps of my pursuers as they tried to close the distance between us, but there was no sound, only the wind cutting through the barren tree limbs.

As the day wore on, my legs ached from the nonstop march. My toes were going numb from the cold and my head throbbed. I had barely eaten in two days and a forest still going through spring thaw wasn’t exactly overflowing with things I could eat. At least, I didn’t think it was. I had never been the outdoor type.

But the aches and pains were forgotten as the sun started its slow descent toward the horizon and I had yet to see any sign of civilization or even the road. Panic was chipping away at my calm. What was the next step to my master plan? Going back to the house was definitely not an option, and not because I was unsure I could find it again.

I stopped in an open clearing and glanced up at the distant horizon. The sun was barely peeking over the edge. At best, there was only another thirty minutes of good light. Did I keep going in the dark and risk stepping into a hole that could break my leg? Did I stop and build a fire so I didn’t freeze to death in the night? Two thin blankets weren’t going to be enough when they’d barely kept the cold away while I’d been trudging through the woods during the daylight hours. Of course, I didn’t have a lighter or matches. My odds of starting a fire with a bunch of wet branches were pretty slim even if I wasn’t afraid of being spotted.

Tension and fear grew within me as the minutes ticked by and the sun sank lower. Sleep would be impossible until the sun rose again and that was for the best. Vanko was my biggest threat. Nightwalkers could move with blinding speed. It would be too easy for him to catch up to me despite the fact that I’d been walking all day. I needed to keep moving if I was to have any chance of escaping him.

Keeping the blankets wrapped around my arms, I continued through the woods, praying that some sign of civilization would finally emerge from the thickening darkness. But it wasn’t to be.

Within two hours, I was spending more time picking myself up from the ground than I was making forward progress. My palms were covered in a series of little scrapes and cuts from where I’d tried to catch myself as I fell. My jeans were cold and muddy. And there was no light for me to follow. I kept looking for a break in the trees where I’d see a light from a building or a car, something to tell me that there was another person somewhere out there. I couldn’t possibly be the last creature alive in the world, but it was beginning to feel that way.

The wolves quickly proved me wrong. Somewhere out the woods, a wolf lifted its voice in a lonesome song for a moon I couldn’t even see. I froze, listening to the forlorn song, trying to get a feel for what direction it was in and how far away. A couple seconds later, another joined it and this one sounded closer.

Fuck.
Were they hunting me? Dear god, I knew I was an easy meal, but I didn’t need to worry about being eaten by a pack of wolves when a pissed off vampire was probably hot on my heels. Brushing aside the fact that I couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of me, I started to run through the woods, trying to put more distance between where I thought the wolves might be and myself. I wasn’t making much progress as I painfully bounced off trees while their branches slashed across my face.

Above my heavy breathing and my plodding footsteps through the brush, I became aware of another sound. I wasn’t the only one moving through the dead leaves, only this creature was moving with more speed and grace. A scream jumped from me when something large brushed past me with a low growl. I stumbled and landed hard on my knees. The dark creature turned, its large eyes reflecting light from some unseen source. One of the wolves had reached me. It growled low and deep, the sound wringing a whimper from me. I had nothing to fight it, nothing to stop it from ripping my throat out. Hell, I could barely see the thing in the darkness.

A second later, its growl was echoed by a second directly behind me. They’d both found me and I hadn’t a prayer.

“You shouldn’t have tried to escape, Erin.” Vanko’s cold voice drifted through the air in a sing-song melody. The sound chilled me in a way that the wolves couldn’t. I closed my eyes and choked back a sob. I didn’t know if he controlled the wolves and sent them after me, or if the wolves simply didn’t care about the nightwalker because he wasn’t a warm meal. Either way, Vanko was not there to save me.

“Stefan didn’t ask you to kidnap me. He didn’t ask you to turn me,” I said when I could draw a deep breath. Opening my eyes, I stared into the darkness and still could not spot him. “Nothing you told me last night was the truth.”

“And how do you know that?” His voice coursed strangely around me as if he was circling me like a vulture in the sky, and yet he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t disturb the wind or crush a single leaf under foot.

I blinked, sending hot tears down my cold, wind-bitten cheeks. “Because I know Stefan. He would never place me in harm’s way.”