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The man holding her had strength the likes of which she’d never encountered, not even in the wolves, and he carried her along in his wake as if she weighed practically nothing.
Finally, he cast her to the ground, brambles and underbrush all around, the night so dark she could make nothing out beyond her immediate surroundings. The smell of pine pitch and ferns was strong, and the stench of him threatened to overwhelm all of it.
She bit into the gag, glaring up at him as he looked back toward the roadway.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
It was the bitterest of ironies. Taken captive, spirited away from the only world she knew just as she was beginning to accept her place in it.
A warbling, spiraling scream sounded in the distance, perhaps in the direction of the vehicle Nelson and Dale were driving. She had no idea where Vince had disappeared to, the night seeming to swallow him up as soon as he left her in the wrecked Ford.
Pulling at the bonds locking her arms behind her, she grunted in frustration, and not a little pain. The ropes about her wrists and forearms were tight, digging into her skin, her fingertips already beginning to numb. If she didn’t get them free soon, she was in real danger of injury to her limbs from lack of blood.
But it was clear her loathsome captor cared not at all about such considerations.
There was another scream in the distance, even higher pitched, the sound one of pure primal terror and pain—then it was cut off abruptly.
“That would be the end of your companions, I should think,” the vampire said, his voice a hideous rasp, as he crouched down before her, his elbows resting on his bent knees. “No one is coming to save you, I’m afraid.” He grasped her chin, using it to turn her head this way and that. “Pretty enough, I suppose. The Network cares not though. They’ll know what’s to be done with you.”
It was her first spark of hope, if very, very small, that she might not be killed immediately. What did he mean?
But whether or not she was to be spared in the short term, there was an immediate pressing problem. There was every likelihood that Dmitri had no clue what was going on, he and his packmates tracking through the endlessness of the nighttime forest, on their ceremonial hunt, apparently some strange sort of eulogy for the fallen Caleb.
Though it was absurd to try, she closed her eyes, willing it, needing it, begging for it in her mind, to open that door—to him.
Dmitri. Dmitri! I’m in terrible danger. The vampires have taken me. Please come for me!
Even if he could hear her—which was unlikely in the extreme—she had no idea where to tell him to come to.
She was completely lost, the black featurelessness of the night so incredibly disorienting.
The trees to their left rustled, the brush suddenly parting, the glowing red eyes giving it away.
Another one of them!
Only this wasn’t just another vampire. This was an absolute behemoth, easily seven feet tall and built like a Mack truck, his head of hair a close-cropped wiry silver akin to what she imagined the skeletonized remains of the dead inside their coffins likely had long after their burial. His eyes were deep-set and beady, his hands like twin giant mauls.
“Ah, Straker.Finally.” Greely rose, addressing the hulking vampire. “Her miserable companions taken care of?”
“It’s done,” Straker said, his voice a sepulchral croak.
“And where are the others?”
Straker tilted his head over his left shoulder. “Tracking the remaining wolves. Four of them including the leader. Shouldn’t be a problem for the two of them.”
Oh no. Dmitri! My lo—
She cut off the word in her mind, shocked she’d almost thought it unbidden. But it wasn’t horror, or embarrassment, or frustration she grappled with at nearly uttering the word, if only in her own head.
Most of all, what struck her was that it felt…right.
(Stasia)
Dmitri!
She was glad in that moment for her hands bound at her back, lest she might have pressed them to her face in surprise—and relief. Such a gesture might have tipped off her captors.
Dmitri! Hurry!
