On The Run With A Vampire

5. Raven

CHAPTER 5

RAVEN

Everything happens in a blur of motion.

The door flies off its hinges. The vampire— Lucien —leaps in front of me and shoves me roughly backwards. I flip over my coffee table, shrieking as I land in an unceremonious heap on the floor. Two people come storming into my apartment.

Oh. And they’ve got weapons.

Crossbows, to be exact.

A hint of recognition dawns on me as I scramble away from my now broken coffee table until my back hits the wall. These are the same people who skidded into the crosswalk earlier tonight, brandishing crossbows and barking demands at us.

“Got him!” the man yells as he stalks further into my living room, holding his crossbow up high. He’s short, with thin, stringy black hair, and he’s wearing a pair of thick glasses that have copious amounts of white tape wrapped around the middle. There are several wooden stakes strapped around his upper body, and his crossbow is aimed squarely at Lucien’s chest.

“Good job, Todd,” the woman cheers as she too slides into my living room. Her long green and black braids are pulled into a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a white t-shirt with a little green alien printed across the front and the words ‘I BELIEVE’ underneath it. “And who’s this?”

“Not sure, Melody,” Todd says, eyes narrowing as he glances at the watch on his wrist. “But I’m not getting a reading.”

A reading?

“Must be an accomplice,” Melody says, hiking her crossbow up until it’s pointed directly at me. “Look at us go. Two in one. Boss is going to be so pleased.”

“What the fu—” I start, but Lucien cuts me off.

“Unbelievable,” he growls. I can’t see his face from this position, but his body language is taut and stiff. He was already tall, but in this moment, it feels like he’s grown another three inches at least. “This is tantamount to stalking. I won’t tolerate it.”

To their credit, neither Todd nor Melody falter even as Lucien towers over them, his body shaking with barely concealed rage. Although Todd does audibly gulp.

I suppose I can’t blame him.

The air in the room is practically crackling with tension, charged by Lucien’s fury. It’s more than anger—it’s a visceral force. Todd and Melody exchange a quick glance.

“Th-That’s enough from you,” Todd stutters, trying and failing to inject some bravado into his voice. “Specimen #1, you are under arrest for the mu?—”

“Specimen?” Lucien spits, his voice reverberating through my apartment like thunder. The walls seem to tremble, or maybe it’s just the adrenaline pulsing through my veins that’s making everything shake.

Todd adjusts his grip on his crossbow, fingers trembling. “We’d rather bring you in alive, but if you force my hand…”

Lucien lets out a dry, humourless laugh.

Melody shifts her weight uneasily, her gaze flicking between Lucien and me. “We have our orders,” she says, her voice tight with tension. “You and your associate are a threat.”

Associate?

“I don’t even know him!” I yell.

“Lies,” Melody sniffs. “I remember you now. You were there earlier, at the intersection. Clearly, you two are in cahoots.”

Cahoots. I’m being held at crossbow-point by someone who genuinely uses the word cahoots.

It says a lot that this isn’t the strangest thing that’s happened to me today.

“Listen, I have no idea who you two are, or what he— ” I jerk my chin up in Lucien’s direction. “Is mixed up in. But I swear, I have no idea what’s goi?—”

A stake comes flying through the air and lodges itself in the wall next to me about an inch away from my shoulder.

“ That was a warning,” Melody says primly. “I don’t want to hear anything else out of you for now.”

Fear pins me in place.

Lucien glances back at me, his eyes widening and then narrowing in quick succession. In one swift motion, he steps forward and positions himself directly in Melody’s line of shot. His stance is tense, coiled like a predator ready to strike.

“Enough.” Lucien’s voice cuts through the haze of panic and fear that’s clouding my thoughts. He lifts a hand and waves it in Melody and Todd’s direction. “You will not threaten her.”

Todd scoffs, his grip on his crossbow tightening. “Your glamour is useless on us, Specimen #1. We’ve been trained.”

Lucien cocks his head to the side. I can’t see his face, but I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Is that so? Seems like your partner might need a refresher.”

Panic, clear as day, appears in Todd’s eyes as he looks over towards Melody. Her crossbow is still pointed at me, but her arms are shaking wildly as if she’s fighting an invisible force that’s trying to push them down.

“Fight it, Melody!” Todd hisses through gritted teeth. “Fight it!”

“I—I’m—I can’t ,” Melody wails as she drops the crossbow and slumps to the floor. “It’s too much.”

“Goddamn it!” Todd swivels on the spot, alternating between pointing the crossbow at me and then Lucien, and then back to me again. “Now you listen, and you listen good. I’m only going?—”

“Raven?” a voice calls from the hall. A voice I know only too well. “Oh my God. What the fuck?”

Dread pools in my stomach as panic climbs up my throat. Daphne .

“Another associate?” Todd sneers, whirling around to point his crossbow at the door. “Boss is going to have a field day when he finds out how many of you are crawling around this city.”

I can hear Daphne’s footsteps tentatively padding up the hall.

“Raven?” There’s a quiver in her voice I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. “Raven, are you in here? Are you okay?”

Todd’s finger inches towards the trigger, and something feral comes over me. With an almighty screech, I lunge forward and tackle Todd to the ground just as Daphne steps into view. The crossbow goes off, sending yet another stake straight into my wall. Todd’s head hits the floor with a loud thud , and he goes limp underneath me.

Daphne stands frozen in place, her eyes wide as she scans the scene in front of her. “What?—”

“We don’t have time for this,” Lucien says gruffly. He kicks aside Todd’s fallen crossbow with a look of pure disdain. “Good job with that one.”

I glance down and bile quickly races up my throat. Todd is motionless, sprawled out on the floor.

“Oh God—” I crawl off him. “What have I?—”

“He’s not dead ,” Lucien says, sounding very much like he’d prefer it if he were. “Just unconscious. But he won’t be for long. And that one has about another minute before my glamour stops working.”

Melody is still on the floor shaking, but it looks like she’s on the cusp of winning the mental battle she’s currently fighting.

“We need to go,” Lucien says firmly.

“ Excuse me .” Daphne takes a step further into my living room, her hands on her hips. “Is anyone going to explain what’s happening here?”

“No,” Lucien says swiftly.

“And who the hell do you think you are?” Daphne snaps, glaring at Lucien as she looks him up and down.

Idly, I wonder if Daphne would be doing all this if she knew what Lucien truly was. She probably would, if I’m being honest. Daphne and fear are just two things that don’t go together.

“No, actually,” Daphne waves a dismissive hand in Lucien’s face. “I don’t even want to know. Just go. ”

“That,” Lucien says through gritted teeth, “is what I’m trying to do.” He turns to me and tips his head. “I’m only going to say this once, Ms. Hartley. Once those two are up, they’re going to come after you.”

Why?

“You can either come with me or try and hash it out with them. And if you’re choosing the former, which I highly advise, then we need to leave now.” He sticks out a hand and appraises me coolly. “ Now , Ms. Hartley. I won’t ask again.”

“ Raven ?” Daphne says, disbelief colouring her voice. “You are not seriously?—”

Adrenaline fuels my movements and drowns out the sound of Daphne’s protests as I scramble to my feet and reach for Lucien’s hand. It’s cold to the touch, but as soon as our skin makes contact, I feel a jolt of warm electricity shoot through me.

I don’t have time to dwell on it, though, because Lucien is pulling me to my feet.

“Raven!” Daphne yelps. “What is going on? Is this—Is this the guy ?”

“I mean, yes, technically he is, but?—”

Lucien races past Daphne and out into the hall, still tugging me behind him. “You can catch up with your friend later. Preferably when we don’t have two murderous buffoons hunting us down.”

Well, when you put it like that.

“I’ll be fine,” I yell as I let Lucien drag me out of my own home.

Daphne stares at me, eyes wide, mouth open. “Raven.”

“I promise,” I call as I step out into the hall and race towards the stairs. “Don’t even worry; everything is going to be fine.”

Famous last words.

The thing about willingly running away from a probable crime scene with a vampire is that there’s not much precedent for something as insane as that.

I’m desperately trying to keep up with Lucien as he pulls me down the stairs and out onto the dark, rain-slicked streets. It’s a little hard, though, given the fact that I’m in my house slippers and keep slipping and sliding as we go.

Lucien doesn’t seem bothered by my discomfort. His grip is firm and steady as he pulls me through alleyways and side streets with a speed and confidence that seems almost supernatural.

Which—yeah, okay, that makes sense.

“You’re not very good at running,” he mutters under his breath as I stumble on yet another patch of particularly slippery ground.

“I’d say I’m better at it than you are at crossbow dodging.”

“Fair point.”

I steal a glance back over my shoulder, half-expecting to see Todd and Melody bursting out of my building and hurtling down the street, but there’s no sign of them yet.

“Here,” Lucien says, coming to an abrupt halt outside a derelict brick building opposite a car dealership. “Come along, Ms. Hartley. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

I just nod, too out of breath to form words. Every nerve in my body is on edge, hyper-aware of every shadow and every sound around us.

Lucien shoulders open the waterlogged door and I follow him into a dark, damp foyer. It smells like mould in here, and I’m pretty sure I can hear rats scurrying around in the shadows.

I stifle a shudder. At least it beats standing outside waiting for Todd and Melody to make a reappearance.

Lucien closes the door behind us, plunging us into near darkness. If it weren’t for a nearby grime-covered window letting in tiny slivers of moonlight, I doubt I’d be able to see more than a foot in front of me.

“So,” I say, watching as Lucien plops himself down on the staircase, “what’s the plan?”

Lucien leans back, winces slightly, then leans forward. “Plan?”

“Yeah. The plan. How are we getting those?—”

“Buffoons?” Lucien supplies helpfully.

“—those two off our back?”

“Oh.” Lucien gives me a pitying look. “We don’t. This is what they do.”

“What?”

He shrugs, like this is just a mere inconvenience and he hasn’t turned my entire life upside down. “They’re from the S.B.E.F.”

I stare blankly at him and he huffs out a long, suffering sigh, once again acting like he’s the inconvenienced party here.

“The Supernatural Being Eradication Force. S.B.E.F. ”

“Eradication?” I can’t help but wrinkle my nose. “That sounds drastic.”

“It is,” Lucien says, a wry smile tugging one corner of his lips upwards. “Thankfully, they’re largely incompetent.”

“Didn’t seem so incompetent back there.”

“I said largely ,” Lucien says with a roll of his eyes. “As the name suggests, they’re preoccupied with finding and ridding the world of what they deem to be supernatural beings.”

“Things like vampires?”

“ Beings ,” Lucien says frostily. “And yes. Vampires. Demons. Werewolves. Harpies. Ghosts. Ghouls. Witches. The list goes on.”

He says it in the same tone of voice someone might use for talking about the weather. As if the existence of supernatural beings is a perfectly normal thing. Though I guess for him, it is.

“They think we’re a scourge on society,” Lucien continues bitterly. “As if we haven’t been walking the Earth for just as long as humans. The only saving grace is that they’re notoriously terrible at the job. Since the founding of the S.B.E.F, they’ve not been able to capture definitive proof of the supernatural. Nothing that will assuage the higher-ups that the last eighty years haven’t been a colossal waste of time and resources, at least. Their funding has been slashed and, last I heard, they’re down to a singular three-person department, and even that’s being threatened with closure.”

“But they found you ,” I say.

“Yes.” Lucien purses his lips into something reminiscent of a pout. “They did. I believe the person heading up the S.B.E.F these days is marginally more competent than his predecessors.”

I press my fingers against my temples and try to massage away the headache I can feel coming on. “So, and correct me if I’m wrong, the S.B.E.F are after you because they need to get proof that vampires, and the supernatural community in general, are real?”

“Correct.”

“And they’re after me because…”

Lucien frowns. “I can’t be certain, but I believe they have a device for detecting supernatural beings.”

The memory of Todd glancing at his watch shoves itself to the forefront of my mind. “Makes sense.”

“I imagine it varies between species, but I assume the criteria for deciding whether someone is a vampire relies on whether their device can detect a heartbeat or not.”

Ah.

“His watch—the device—it didn’t pick up my heartbeat, did it?”

“Given their behaviour back there, I’d say that’s a resounding no.”

Great. Once again, my heart is causing me nothing but grief.

“So they’ll just keep coming after us forever? That’s what you’re telling me?”

Lucien shrugs. “Or until another being catches their attention. I believe a fairly juvenile wolf pack was just founded in the city. I imagine it won’t take too long for the S.B.E.F to catch wind of them. You know how young wolves are.”

A wolf pack.

In the city.

Of course there is.

I suddenly feel very weak at the knees. “Then I’ll just go back and let them know they’ve made a mistake. That I’m a human with a perfectly functioning heart.”

Sort of.

“Oh yes,” Lucien drawls. “That sounds like a splendid idea. The S.B.E.F are, as you know, the ask questions first, shoot later type .”

“ They aren’t the bad guys here!” I squawk. “You’re the one going around eating people.”

“I do not eat people!” Lucien says, sounding genuinely affronted. “I drain them of their blood.”

A hysterical laugh bursts from my lips. “Like there’s a difference.”

“There is,” Lucien sniffs. “I’m not some common werewolf.”

I don’t even want to think about the implications of that sentence.

“I’m going back,” I say, pushing myself off the wall I’d slumped against. “I’m a human and I’ve got no reason to hide.”

I half-expect him to protest. To reach out and grab my hand and try and get me to see his side of things. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he just shrugs. “Be my guest.”

Irritation floods every single one of my senses. How dare he be so nonchalant about this when it’s entirely his fault I’m in this situation in the first place.

“Fine,” I snap, turning towards the door. “I’m going. Good luck with the S.B.E.F, Lucien. And I hope we never cross paths again.”

“Ms. Hartley—” Lucien begins, but whatever it is he wants to say, I don’t hear it.

I yank open the door, step back out into the night, and let it slam shut behind me.