Hupotasso (Vampire Bachelor Games #2)

15

15

Once again on the Lear, I stare straight across at Caroline where she sleeps, mouth slightly open, eyes covered by a pink, satin sleep mask.

Sam and I used to joke about competitors in The Games who wore these. We’d felt that they were literally blinding themselves to potential attack, which could come at any time, day or night. We called them ‘temporary competitors.’

‘Pity Caroline isn’t a temporary vampire. I wonder how Sam’s going now. Will she have a new roommate already? What would she do in my shoes? She’d definitely try to escape, no question. She’d also counsel staking Caroline.’

I narrow my eyes as I think this. Getting out of the castle and out from under Falcon’s watchful gaze and addictive body is exactly what I need. But if I’m going to escape at some point on this month-long journey, I’m going to have to get rid of Caroline.

‘But kill her? Could I actually kill for my freedom, for my life? Hadn’t I already proven in The Games that I couldn’t? Yes, but there were cameras then, and I didn’t want my legacy to be that of a murderer. I didn’t want my students to see me do something that terrible.’

I look up at the camera watching me now, and sigh. This whole trip is going to be televised. I don’t know where I’m going exactly yet. Part of the surprise for the audience is the random order of the visits and the interplay between the grieving families and the reactions from the royal wife. It’s all so fucked up and psychologically aggravating. It’s like being in an extended version of The Games. Thank God for small mercies, though. Gary Showman will be waiting at my first destination and each destination after that, so I don’t have to travel with the bastard.

Still, the cameras are a complication, because just like when I was in the competition, I know I won’t kill publicly. Even if I had the skills to stake the vampire before me or push her off a cliff or something, I just know I don’t have it in me. Or do I?

‘The public thinks I do…they think I killed Pasha. So, what’s a little more blood on my hands…?’

My brain admonishes my idiocy immediately.

‘Oh, get a grip, Angie. You hadn’t killed Pasha and that’s the fact of the matter, even if you claimed her kill. You could no more kill Caroline than you could off a mouse.’

I sigh heavily. If I’m going to get rid of her I’m going to have to come up with some happy accident or become more diabolical.

‘If only Yin was here, she’d do it. I know she would.’

As I think this I wonder just where my Japanese friend is now. During the long walk to the helicopter extraction point in the last challenge we’d talked very little, but we had touched on this. She had safe houses in many places, but she said her safest option, the place the vampires and her father would least expect her to run to, was a bolt hole in the Appalachian Mountains in North America.

“Hillbilly country,” I’d snorted as I’d dragged our gear through the snow, no longer able to feel my toes. “No one goes there.”

“Exactly,” she’d grinned.

But that was when she’d hoped to settle with her camera man. And I’d never told her the truth about him; that he was part of The Free Men and that he’d tried to kill me several times. That he wasn’t at all who she thought he was.

I hope she’s found out the truth now, but somehow I doubt it.

I scowl as the camera man nearest to me zooms in on my expression as I’m handed an envelope by the flight attendant.

Opening it I read my destination and the first family I’ll be visiting.

‘Oh fuck, speak of the devil. Pasha’s family.’

“Showman, you absolute gombeen,” I whisper.