Bloodseeker - Colin's Conquest Part 8

They both remained standing over her, neither one speaking or moving until Colin heard Ben's breathing quicken. Glancing into Ben's face his fading annoyance returned threefold. Ben peered at Joanna's exposed neck, hunger in his eyes, his juvenile thirst flaring. The bend of her throat reflected the puncture wounds inflicted by his fangs and he ached to re-enter them.

"I believe she is a lost cause for you Colin. She'll give you nothing but trouble. I say we drink her now!"

"Benjamin! Control yourself! I know you are not that foolis.h.!.+"

Knowing that he screwed up, Ben backstepped. "Please accept my most humble apologies, Creator. I will restrain my compulsion with your chosen one. I vow...."

"Never mind, Ben." He glanced at his neophyte. "Draw in your fangs, you insatiable leech!"

Ben covered his mouth with his hand and tried to comply at once.

"Sorry." Ben hurried from the room before he did another stupid thing to annoy his creator.

"Just a moment." Colin's voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Yes?" Ben said without turning, his hand still held over his mouth and stubborn protruding fang teeth.

"Keep the keys to all the locks in the house on your person as I will mine. My Joanna is very crafty and she will search for them. I would bet my eye teeth on it."Colin smiled at his own joke and looked down at his sleeping human guest. He antic.i.p.ated his next battle with her. Instead of waking her, he slipped his arms under her slight body and carried her to bed. She never stirred as he laid her down and covered her with the light cotton blanket. She could wash the soot from her body and her bedding when next she awoke. He watched her sleep for a long while, reveling in her peaceful features. The color already returned to her pale face. Such a strong woman, perfect for his needs.

"Dawn approaches, little one, I must retire. Things will look better tomorrow." He touched her hair and rose to leave her. "Things will be very different tomorrow as well, you shall see."

Eight

Joanna awoke with a start. The sun burned hot on her skin and the room seemed warm and uncomfortable. She kicked off the blanket and stared at the ceiling. For a moment she didn't know where she was, but the disorientation evaporated as the fogginess of sleep lifted. Oh ... What a b.u.mmer. She closed her eyes tight and tried to forget again, but too late, reality came screaming back with a vengeance ... vampires are real.

With a huff she sat up and surveyed the room.

"Pete!" Her parrot's cage sat on the dresser beside the window. Pete perched on his swing, basking in the sunlight, ignoring her as usual. Someone covered half of his cage with a large towel that he had already chewed holes in. She wondered if either one of the vampires knew anything about birds. Maybe they did since the towel blocked the sunlight in half the cage.

The sunlight! No shutters! She scrambled off the bed and dashed to the window to grab a thick wrought iron bar in each hand.

That devil granted her wish and opened the shutters, yes, but he installed bars on the window to prevent her escape!

Pus.h.i.+ng the small bedside table over to the long horizontal window, she stood on the table and tried shoving her head through the bars.

Joanna shoved and shoved until she bruised her head but she wouldn't fit through the bars. Giving up, but not admitting defeat just yet, she searched for bolts on both ends. There were bolts, yes, but there appeared to be no way to remove them. These bars would indeed be a fire trap should the house ever be engulfed in flames. There went her idea for burning the house down too.

After jumping down from the table, she kicked it back to its place beside the bed, then decided she better arrange it like she found it so Colin wouldn't know she tried to shove through the bars. It felt so strange to think of him by his name. Colin, and the young pain in the a.s.s, Ben. They have names. It didn't seem like they should, unless they went by Dracula or something ... or Nosferatu even better. Her silly thoughts amused her and distracted her from the truth of the situation.

"h.e.l.lo!" Pete shouted at her and she smiled at her bird and imagined that he smiled back.

"h.e.l.lo Ben."

"Arrrggggghhhhhhhh." Joanna inhaled saliva and went into a coughing fit.

"h.e.l.lo Ben ... h.e.l.lo Ben ... h.e.l.lo Ben..."

Still coughing, she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. That traitorous bird! He stays with Ben for two days and he's already saying his name.

"Traitor!" She called to the bird through the closed door. In response, she heard his silly canned laughter. Joanna sighed and leaned against the counter, staring in the mirror. "I'm surrounded by smart a.s.ses."

Dark circles and a tiny bit of soot stood out in stark contrast with her pale skin, but she didn't look half bad, considering. Good to just be alive especially since her last memory was Colin's hands around her throat.

Looking around, she noticed several additions to the elegant bathroom. Those two kept themselves busy last night.

A beautiful, realistic undersea world shower curtain stretched from wall to wall beside the bathtub. The sensation of being underwater with the swimming fishes overwhelmed her and she found herself holding her breath. She stretched out her fingers to touch the water, just to confirm to her senses that it was only a vinyl curtain.

She pulled back the curtain to see a clear bottle of blue shampoo and new bar of pale blue bath soap waiting for her on the recessed shelf above the sparkling tub. Everything in this bathroom was color coordinated right down to the blue water in the toilet bowl. Incredible, yes, but so ... Colin. She just knew Colin decorated this bathroom with all its blue accessories. He couldn't know that blue was her favorite color, or could he?Her lips curled with distaste as she peeled off her filthy clothes and folded them into a neat stack on the toilet. It would be a desecration to toss dirty clothes on his immaculate floor.

The shower felt wonderful. She didn't remember ever feeling as clean as she did now, wrapped in a pretty powder blue towel, with a matching smaller towel on her head.

Opening the bathroom door, the glare of the sunlight blinded her for a moment, then revitalized her. She felt stronger now, and with the bright suns.h.i.+ne outside she could make her escape!

Colin said her clothes were here. She hoped he told the truth because she would rather go nude than put her smelly clothes back on. She would tramp through the woods in a towel if she had to. In the top dresser drawer she found Pete's food and treats arranged in a neat row. The second drawer held her socks and underwear. She blushed at the thought of their masculine hands on her panties. She found nothing in the remaining two drawers.

Where did they put her clothes? She spied the closet. Did they hang them up? She folded back the closet doors and her mouth dropped open when she saw all her clothes. Every article of clothing with the exception of her underwear hung in a neat row, one item per hanger.

Someone spent a lot of time folding each pair of short pants and draping them on hangers. Her t-s.h.i.+rts and blouses alike occupied their own hangers. Blue jeans, sundresses, and skimpy little tube tops made a colorful a.s.sortment of different attire hung with military precision in the wide closet. The contents of her two small suitcases had been stretched out into eight feet of closet s.p.a.ce.

She couldn't believe her panties and bras weren't in there too, hung on individual clothes hangers. At the bottom of the closet, she found her suitcases and her tennis shoes and sandals, all in a neat row of course.

She dressed in a hurry, then pulled the suitcases from the closet and tossed them on the bed. The latch made a loud pop when she opened it and the breath caught in her throat. What if they can move about in daylight? Colin would kill her if he caught her trying to escape, or at the very least hurt her ... again.

Pete picked that tense moment to start singing in his loudest voice.

"Yankee Doodoo went to town..."

"Shhhh! Pete, shut up!" The knot of tension in her gut grew. She ran around the bed to cover his cage so he would hush and in her haste, whacked her toes on the bedpost. Hopping around on her uninjured foot, she held her throbbing toes in her hand and moaned through clenched teeth.

The parrot's maniacal laughter filled the room and for one insane moment she wanted to shove his head into his water dish and see if he could laugh underwater.

With that murderous thought, she dropped her foot and stood, stock still, staring at everything she prepared to take with her on her trek into the thicket.

"Oh get a grip!" No way could she carry a large bird cage and two suitcases, plus her cat and some food. With a groan she flopped down on the bed, despondent and unsure of what to do next. Nearly half an hour later, after staring with unseeing eyes at the tiled ceiling, Joanna rose like a somnambulist and placed the suitcases back in the closet. Then she went back to Pete's cage.

"I'll come back for you Petie bird. I promise. I'm going for help." She checked his food and found it full. They had even placed several chunks of grapefruit and banana in the bowl for him. Someone knew how to care for birds in this household. Good. She just prayed Colin wouldn't kill her pets in a fit of anger when he found her missing. It was a chance she had to take. She had no choice!

"Bye Bye, Petie. See ya soon." With one longing glance back at her parrot, Joanna fled the room. She ran straight for the front door and saw before she got halfway through the den that the key no longer hung there by the door.

"Dammit!"She ran from window to window, finding them all covered with locked shutters and no keys evident. The back door! She covered the distance between the front and the back of the house in seconds. The first thing she noticed when she reached the small washroom was the new pet door they'd installed. On the floor nearby sat her cat's bowls. Both food and water bowls were full.

She smiled. Those two monsters had cared for her pets well. They didn't have to do it. They could've left them behind, in Ben's words, to starve to death alone in her cabin.

Her smile vanished when she saw the new dead bolt s.h.i.+ning above the door k.n.o.b ... no key in it, of course. She kneeled down by the cat door and attempted to crawl through it. Joanna tried forcing herself into the tiny opening until the thought of herself stuck with her behind in the air when the vampires arose, stopped her.

She searched the entire house and found no other exits and no keys. A prisoner! All the shutters firm and locked, so breaking a window wouldn't help, except in her room and the a.s.sholes had installed burglar bars there. If she just had a hacksaw, she could saw through the locks. It would take time, but what other hope did she have? She didn't even have that hope. She saw no hacksaws or any other tools when she searched the cabin, with the exception of one Phillips screwdriver in the kitchen drawer.

She sighed and leaned on the windowsill, her hands gripping the bars like the dejected little chimpanzees do at the zoo, staring out with no hope of escape. She froze, her heart pounding, her chest swelling with excitement. THE SCREWDRIVER!!

Stifling her delighted squeal, she ran down the hall into the kitchen, slipping and sliding on the waxed floors. She skated to the drawer and ripped it open, propelling the entire contents of the drawer to the front. There it was, her savior, the s.h.i.+ny black and yellow handled screwdriver, waiting to liberate her from her formidable captor. Oh please be the right one! Praying the whole way to the back door, she held the tool in her hand like an idol. Yes! Yes! The deadbolt was installed with cross cut screws! Within fifteen minutes, she had the entire mechanism removed and the back door open.

"Ha! I outsmarted you again ... Creator!"

She rushed back into the kitchen and retrieved another cola from the fridge to take with her, then hurried out of the house.

Guilt gnawed at her for leaving Patches and Pete behind, but she vowed to bring an army back with her to rescue them, during the day of course. When she entered the woods she hesitated, remembering what Colin said just last night. 'Do not anger me', and 'kill you without hesitation' raced through her mind over and over again like an endless loop tape. A lump of fear surged in her gut.

What if he catches me? They couldn't come out in the daylight, right?

Charged with fear, she broke into a run, dodging trees and underbrush and strangling vines that threatened to hang her if she didn't pay attention. She ran, then walked sipping her cola, then ran on and on until her sides ached and nausea gripped her gut. Joanna could no longer go on and collapsed on a half-decayed log. Then she vomited the entire contents of her stomach.

Her legs drew up against the log and she rested her head between her knees as the spasms continued. The tree rolled each time she heaved and at one point she felt the bark cut her on the back of her ankle. She ignored the stinging until later, after the vomiting stopped. She hopped up off the log and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. The burning pain intensified and she peered down at the back of her ankle to see how bad the scratches were. No scratches at all! Just several groups of loosely s.p.a.ced dots right above her shoe.

"What the h.e.l.l?"

Glancing at the log, she saw nothing extraordinary.

Dreading what she might find, visions of millions of giant worms crossing her mind, she stood as far back as she could and pushed the log over.

The pain in her leg increased and the sun had already dropped behind the trees. She almost didn't see him, even with his beautiful coloration ... the worst worm of them all.

A snake, a small banded snake lay almost hidden by the rotted wood. It appeared to be a milk snake, with red, black and yellow stripes. It couldn't be a coral snake. The bite wasn't swelling or showing signs of discoloration.She thought back to her Girl Scout days when she'd learned a chant to differentiate between the similar snakes. "Red and black- hurts like a tack, uh ... red and yellow-kill a fellow.... yeah that's it." She stared down at the snake. Dusk had fallen, she had to strain to see. But see them she did, and the once beautiful colors now morphed into a horrifying sight. Black, yellow, red, yellow, black, yellow, red ... a deadly coral snake.

"s.h.i.+t! s.h.i.+t! s.h.i.+t!" She screamed to the treetops. "What next?"

Moving well away from the log and the dangerous snake, she sat down and removed the shoelace from one of her shoes then tied it under her knee as a tourniquet.

Coral snakes were known to be docile. She must've been standing on the poor thing when she puked her guts out.

There's no telling how many times he bit her. She hadn't noticed until at least ten minutes later when the bites began to burn. At least it didn't look swollen so the snake hadn't injected much venom.

That's what she kept telling herself anyway. Glancing around at the advancing gloom, she knew she had to get out of the thicket right away or she wouldn't be able to see. She could manage no more than a slow trot, but determination propelled her onward, as far away from the vampires as she could get, snake bite or not! Before long, it grew too dark to see more than a few feet ahead of her. s.h.i.+vering and weak, her body slowed down of its own volition. She continued plodding along until she collapsed on a bed of pine needles and didn't have the strength to get up again.

It felt like her bones had elasticized or were no longer there. She was a formless invertebrate lying in a heap under the whispering pines.

She needed to release the tourniquet for a moment but she couldn't sit up to reach it. Her leg throbbed and she had developed a headache as well. What the h.e.l.l, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. What she wouldn't give to be back at her own cabin, swallowing a couple of aspirin to cure a simple headache.

Overcome with weariness, she stared off into the tops of the now dark trees, never leaving consciousness but incapacitated just the same. All sense of time stopped and there was only the pain and this incredible lethargy. Colin's ethereal face floated above her, his features stained with fury. If she had to hallucinate, why did it have to be his mad face that the venom conjured?

"Joanna."

Could an apparition talk?

He bent down closer to her, peering into her eyes, his angry expression gone.

She felt his fingers brush her knee as he untied the shoelace tourniquet then retied it again. Then he removed his jacket and placed it over her cold body.

"Dammit, Joanna!"

Oh no, mad again, probably kill her this time. Her face felt stiff, she couldn't move her jaw, but she struggled to speak.

"Don be ma at me Ca..in."

His mouth fell open when she attempted to talk, just when he thought she could shock him no further. How could she speak? Her blood pressure was so low he strained to hear her heartbeat.

"Joanna! Can you hear me?" He lifted her head, resting it in his palm. She held her eyes open, but it did not appear that she could focus on anything.

"Joanna, listen to me. I am going to place antivenin in your mouth. You swallow it."He brought his wrist to his mouth, and just like in the cla.s.sic movies bit into his own vein, then pushed his bleeding wrist against her lips. Nothing happened. With his thumb, he pried her mouth open and let the blood drip on her tongue. She swallowed. She swallowed again, then locked her lips to his wrist to catch the flow directly from the fount. In a few short minutes, the wound in his wrist clotted and healed, and he withdrew it from her mouth.

With tender care he rolled her over onto her stomach, and examined the wounds behind her delicate little ankle. From the s.p.a.cing of the tiny teeth marks, he deducted she received three bites from the venomous snake, a potentially fatal situation. Why had she let the small snake bite her, not once, but three times? Suicide? No, not her.

He stared at the pulse beating just beneath the skin behind her knee. With a groan, he bent over and lifted her leg to his mouth, driving his fangs into her vein. She stiffened and uttered a feeble no but the vampire's euphoria relaxed her in an instant.

Her blood tasted bitter with venom, but he kept drinking knowing that it would have little effect on him, although it would more than likely have proved fatal to Joanna's slight form. Just a sip from here ... then he removed his fangs and placed her leg back on the ground.

One hand on her hipbone, and one on her shoulder, he eased her onto her back. Her eyes closed and she didn't appear to be in pain any longer, but it could be his narcotic saliva working its magic on her. He should drink again from the afflicted leg. He moved to her feet and spread her legs apart, then kneeled and once again sank his teeth into her flesh. This time he tapped the vein from her inner thigh, hoping to remove more of the venom before it traveled to her heart and the rest of her body.

For a moment he lost himself in the rhythm of her heartbeat, the blood l.u.s.t demanding all she had to give. Nothing existed but the blood, flowing hot and bitter into his greedy mouth, more and more blood.

Joanna moaned and his trance was broken. He withdrew and clamped his hand over the puncture wounds to prevent any needless blood loss. With his hand still clamped to her thigh he stretched over her legs and sat beside her. It would not do for her to awaken and find him on his knees between her outstretched legs.

Bit by bit she came out of the swoon, and a ghost of a smile crossed her face before she fell asleep again.

Colin sat beside his mortal woman watching her beautiful face as she slept. From where had all these emotions surfaced? Being with Joanna made human emotions return to him, and just like a human, they changed quicker than the Texas weather. He had been so furious when he awakened this evening and found her missing that he was determined to go ahead and kill her when he caught up to her.

Enraged that his attempts to keep her captive failed again and unsure of how long she had been gone, he headed out into the woods after her. Not long after entering the woods in his pursuit a feeling of dread had washed over him, so strong that is caused his blood seeker skin to p.r.i.c.kle. Something felt wrong, very wrong, and his anger dissolved in a skipped heartbeat.

He had picked up his pace, following Joanna's trail away from the lair at an alarming speed, almost flying through the trees. When he drew close enough to hear her feeble heartbeat he experienced a long dormant emotion ... fear. Fear for Joanna ... fear of losing her ... afraid he was too late to save her. But he had saved her, and she would now live to torment him another day.

Good. He would enjoy the torment. It made him feel alive.

For over an hour he sat unmoving, like the trees in the forest, with Joanna's limp fingers clutched in his own. Then Joanna's hand clenched, her nails digging into his thumb. Was her grimace from dreams of the colorful snake, or was it him that haunted her nightmares?

Colin's all-consuming thirst now returned, gnawing at his intestines and he knew he needed to bring her, with haste, back to the cabin and go out to hunt, to glut himself on human life. He rose, lifting Joanna in his arms as easily as picking up a pine bough from the forest floor. She weighed next to nothing and seemed a perfect fit in his embrace. He could hold her all night, but no, he had to go kill.

The full moon and his preternatural hormones demanded it, and they could not be denied. Many times he tried, but always the blood l.u.s.t drove him out before dawn, to rob some unlucky mortal of his or her life's blood. To coin one of Ben's quaint expressions, 'what a b.u.mmer.'

Ben thought the same thing, what a b.u.mmer, after checking his post office box and again finding it empty. He just didn't understand why his new campaign didn't work like the advertis.e.m.e.nt said it would. He followed the instructions to the letter! He would never ama.s.s great wealth at this rate. Perhaps it was time to try another approach, another system. He had several other programs on his desk at home that he planned to try. He had his doubts though because this one guaranteed it would work. He sent out the letters and reports just like the literature demanded he do and despite the company's promise of $2500 per week, he received nothing! Ben sighed with disappointment and slammed his box closed. He'd better hurry away from this area before Colin caught wind of his secret. Ben so wanted Colin to be proud of him and see that he too could ama.s.s great wealth. He knew nothing about the stock market or such things that Colin made his extraordinary wealth with but he too could do it! He would do it!