Slay Alive

Chapter 3

three

When I wake up it’s dark, I’m cold, and I’m hung over as fuck. I’m stiff from the cold, even my nose is cold. Gio must have cranked the air conditioner again. The man is a polar bear at heart.

“ Gioooooooooo. Turn on the heater,” I groan. I roll onto my side and reach for the blankets I must have kicked off of me but the only thing I manage to get a handful of is leaves and grass….. leaves and….grass?

I open my eyes and look around. “What the everloving hell?” I’m not in bed. I’m laying on my back in a pile of leaves in the middle of a forest. Above me I can see an almost full moon. There’s enough light to make out the night sky and the tree limbs swaying over my head. I blink, rub my eyes, and then blink again but still the night time scene persists. It’s not a hallucination. Something yips and howls in the distance and I scream in terror.

Something is going to eat me out here.

How did I get here from my nice warm bed? Where are Gio and Donnie? How did someone get me past them and dump me in the middle of the woods? Even if Gio was out with Donnie trying to keep him from beating Preston’s ass, I should have woken up, right? I’m a heavy sleeper but if I was moved, I’d definitely wake up before whoever kidnapped me left me here.

Kidnapped.

“Oh my god, I got kidnapped.”

Who would want to grab me out of my bed? I’m still in my flannel pajamas. I’ve got nothing on me anyone would want. I rub my temples and try to think it through. Why would I be here? Who would have done this? I rewind the day searching for the person that could have done this and there’s only one person it could have been.

Rhia.

“That beautiful bitch drugged me!”

It feels obvious when I say it outloud. Rhia and her magic love drink that I’m now understanding with the power of 20/20 wasn’t a cocktail after all. She did this to me. How could she? She practically chased me down to make me drink it after I puked up the jello shot. Who knows what would have happened if I’d kept the jello shot down. It couldn’t be any more obvious what happened to me but I was too drunk and too sad and far too high on her moral support to realize what Rhia was doing all along.

But why did she drug me?

I grab at my stomach and start patting myself down. When I don’t find any wounds or blood soaking my pajamas I let out the breath I was holding.

“Oh thank god, I still have both my kidneys.”

After another minute of taking stock of my body, I find that in addition to my internal organs, I have all my fingers and toes, teeth, and eyes. I’m not even missing an ear.

If not to sell on the black market, then why take stranger?

Rhia makes no sense. What ass backwards logic did she use for this kidnapping?

I get to my feet and want to scream because I’m barefoot. “Just fucking great. Now I have to hike my way out like this.” I don’t even bother dusting myself off or picking the leaves out of my hair. There’s no point when I’m sure I’ll eat shit and go rolling down a hill somewhere in this hike to freedom.

I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the cold and start walking. I make it ten feet before I stub my toe on a tree root.

I bite back a frustrated sob and keep walking. “I hate my miserable life.” I try to be careful walking but it’s no use. The moon isn’t bright and there’s no path at all. It’s just roots, rocks and underbrush waiting to act like nature’s Legos from hell.

I pick my way forward gingerly and try to think about happier things like the two hours of bliss I had playing Fangs Are Forever all snuggled up like a cozy burrito. Those two hours were easily the best part of my day. I’d been making good time as a vampire hunter with Lucien wrapped around my little finger. I’d just gotten my invitation to the Eclipse of the Eternal Night Masquerade from Lucien and accepted the quest to explore the Midnight Market to find the perfect ball gown for the event. I loved getting to design clothing and pick colors and patterns in the game. I could spend hours playing in the clothing options. What player wouldn’t if they could? The system was open-sourced with millions of one-of-a-kind options created by the online community marketplace. I loved those servers and was well known in them from my designs for jewelry and weaponry going viral more than once over the years.

Tears prick my eyes as I walk. I should be asleep, with drool on my pillow and my controller barely in my hand because I fell asleep debating the merits of gossamer versus silk and if I wanted to go for a gothic look or have a pastel princess moment. That’s where I should be. Not here. The tears are mostly from embarrassment. I liked Rhia, I really did. When I’d needed a friend she’d shown up like magic.

How could she do this to me?

“True love is inside of you.”

Yeah, fucking right.

The only thing inside of me was a goddamn tranquilizer that let her kidnap and abandon me like an old mattress.

I clench my hands into fists. “Giving me that bullshit love talk. That backstabbing little-” A stick snaps and interrupts my rant. The sound is like a gunshot in the quiet forest. I swallow hard and look around when I hear the sound of branches rustling.

Something is out there.

I hear a wolf howl and I almost piss myself. Oh, fuck. I’m definitely getting eaten. I break into a run when I hear the branches move next to me. I keep my feet under me and surprise myself when I’m not immediately out of breath. I haven’t run since I was forced to in high school but right now? Right now I feel like I could run forever. My steps are sure, I don’t even feel rocks or twigs biting into the soles of my feet. It has to be the adrenaline.

When I break out into a clearing I almost believe that I’m going to be fine and that whatever was in the trees with me is long behind me. That idea of safety vanishes when a shadowy figure bursts from the trees with a cackle.

“Going somewhere, Vampire Hunter?”

Vampire Hunter? What the fuck is this serial killer talking about?

I only have a second to process what’s happening before they land in front of me. That second isn’t long enough for me to slow down and I slam right into them. We both go flying, I come out all right and stay on my feet but the other person goes ass over head and lands about ten feet away from me. They moan and from the way they’re lying I’m pretty sure they broke something from their landing.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper. I look around the clearing but we’re alone. The moon is brighter here, it makes the knee length grass look silver. There’s flowers too, they look black in contrast to the silver grass. It’s pretty really, in an eerie way, with the dark woods ringing the clearing and the night sky full of stars and the moon.

“I’m going to make you scream for that, vampire hunter.” The figure moves and I realize it’s a man. He turns to look at me. I can’t see his features because of how dark it is but I can see he’s big, and that his arm is sticking out in a direction that it shouldn’t be. There’s a sickening snap when the big man jerks his bent arm straight and sets it into place.

Yup, definitely broken.

“No matter how far you run. I’ll find you. You are mine to hunt from this night forevermore.”

Hunt.

He’s going to hunt me? Oh my gods. The pieces click into place and I understand why Rhia kidnapped me and tossed me out here with nothing but my flannel pajamas. How could I not see it before? It’s so clear now.

“She sold me out to be hunted by rich people!”

I’ll never forgive her for this. Rhia is dead meat when I get my hands on her.