Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
“Last night, you and several students from your dorm snuck out after curfew and went to drink behind the science block,” she snaps at me, my little crimes flying out of her mouth like mini bullets.
“Yes,” I say, feeling incredibly guilty. If I’d had any idea whatsoever that going out last night would lead to this, I would have stayed in and studied.
The officer opens her manila folder and pulls several images from the interior. She slides them across to me one after the other, but having seen the very first one, my mind rebels almost instantly.
I’m seeing my friends, but not as they were when I left them. When I left them, they were alive. They are not alive in these pictures. They are very, very dead, strewn about the grass like rag dolls. Not all of them are entirely intact either. I see glazed eyes, bruised bodies, torn clothes, and blood everywhere.
Someone is screaming. Someone is screaming very, very loudly. So loudly it hurts my ears. I put my hands up to cover them, which helps a little. Then, a moment or two later, I realize that it’s me. I am screaming.
“Shit, Scott, what did you spring those on her for?”
The male detective who I didn’t even notice was in the room sweeps the pictures away from me.
“Needed to see her reaction,” Scott says, undeterred.
“I’m sorry, Anya,” the male officer says. He’s also an older man, with graying hair around his temples. He’s got a more relaxed demeanor than the female officer, but I know all about good cop and bad cop and I know that he’s not necessarily on my side.
“What happened?”
“They were killed,” Scott says. “You were somehow completely untouched. We find that suspicious.”
“I wasn’t back there with them the whole night. I was drinking with them to start with, but I wandered off, I think. Into the field. I just got kinda drunk and ended up asleep with the cows. I never heard anything. I don’t know how this happened and I didn’t hear anything…”
“We don’t know how that happened either.”
There’s a note of harsh suspicion in her voice.
“Do you think I did this? Look at me. I’m just… I’m… I could never have…” I stammer a bunch of words.
A sharp rap at the door interrupts my stammered excuses. The door swings open before any of the officers can open it, and a tall woman in a pink suit with long blonde hair strides in.
“My client has representation,” she says. “No further questions, thank you.”
I have no idea who she is, but I feel as though I just met a guardian angel. A sense of relief sweeps through me, some safety replacing the utter fear I felt a moment ago. She places a finely manicured hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Get up,” she says. “We’re leaving.”
“We’d like to…”
“Are you going to charge my client with something?”
“No, at this time…”
“Then we are leaving,” she says. “Come with me, Anya.”
I get up and go with her, still in a state of profound shock. My friends are gone, and in the worst of ways.
“I don’t…”
“Quiet,” my pink lawyer says. “We won’t discuss this while we’re in the station.”
She leads me out to a pink convertible, and I get into the passenger side.
“I’m Cerise Steel,” she says. “Alexei sent me.”
“Thank you so much. I can’t believe that happened. I don’t know what…”
She starts her car and sends it spinning into traffic without seeming to pay attention to the flow of other traffic. I grip the sides of my seat as we break the speed limit almost immediately.
“Vampires,” she says, as the car pulls away from the curb. She says the word like it’s an obvious explanation, something I myself should have thought of.
“Vampires?”
“They were all but extinct in North America until a couple of years ago,” she says. “They’re not like in the movies. They don’t sparkle and stare. They’re more like animals. Dumb, vicious killers.”
I try to digest that information and fail. Vampires. My friends are dead, and somehow I’ve been spared, because vampires.
“Why didn’t they eat me?”
“Vamps don’t like dog meat,” she says bluntly. I get the impression this woman has seen more shit in her life than I could imagine, and she cares about very little other than doing her job.
“Where are we going?”
“Alexei is flying in. I’m taking you to a secure location, and then he’ll meet you and take custody of you. Don’t worry. We’re going to keep you safe. You’re the alpha’s mate of the Volk Khishtnik pack. You’re one of the most important she-wolves in the world. You should never have been out of his sight, let alone a target for vampires.”
The way she says the word vampires is the tonal equivalent of someone picking up a moldy damp lump of stuff from a gutter. It’s disgust beyond disgust.