Eight: The Beloved and the Taken

§ The Beloved and the Taken § 

The first thing I knew when I came to was that something inside me was moving. No, something beneath me. It was causing my body to move in the same pattern; up, down, left, right, right, almost fall off…

            Fall off what?

            The second thing I realized: I was blindfolded. Third discovery: bound wrists; fourth: gagged, and my cracked lips were bleeding�"I could taste the blood. I was freezing.

            A male voice said something in a foreign tongue�"another replied harshly. Yet another replied more harshly. Soon, one was taking off my blindfold.

            How’d they know I was awake? I wondered in awe.

            That was when the morning’s occurrences flooded back to me in an ironic rush to escape my memory. Vampires had taken me. And these were worse than vampire soldiers; they didn’t abide by the cruel vampire laws, because they thought the laws were too flexible.

            Please God, let this be a nightmare that Addie wakes me from, I prayed.

            Once my eye sight was liberated, I got my first glimpse of the one who’d un-blindfolded me. He had vibrant red hair. His eyes were the same colour�"thirsty. He posed a question to someone near my head, looking directly past me. I looked up and saw the ceiling of a car.

            A kidnapping. But why blindfold me? Could they be apprehensive of the possibility of my being rescued or discovered in some way by humans and giving away their location? Did that mean I had a chance�"or that they were being extra cautious? But then, why’d they take off the blindfold? Too many questions zipped through my mind at lightning speed.

            More bellows of questions and orders, and then someone was pulling the gag out of my mouth. Another vampire brought a small Styrofoam cup to my lips. Clear liquid flowed into my mouth before I had a chance to protest. He forced a second cupful of solution into me, and then reached behind him, put them away.

            At least it’s not red, was the last thought I had before slipping into unconsciousness again.

•••                                •§•                               •••

The next thing I knew, I was being carried on the back of someone muscular, followed by others.

            Wherever we were going, I couldn’t see it, since I was facing away from that direction. My hair was falling over my face, so at least I could feign unconsciousness�"unless they could detect the truth from the pace of one’s heartbeat. I told myself to stay calm and keep a steady pulse while I tried to figure out where I was headed and how to get out of this situation alive.

            Since my face was already positioned uncomfortably, I checked out my limited view: the ground. It had a two-inch blanket of snow masking grass. Snow was still falling. Thirty-nine one-one-thousands later, the vampire finally put me down into softness. I closed my eyes the moment I felt him/her shift my weight, trying my best to appear to be Sleeping Average. Someone to my right spoke; someone beside her replied in a strict tone.

            Then I felt ice on my face. When I sputtered water, cruel laughter broke out; I realized that it had been their way of “awaking” me from the drug-induced slumber.

            Without a change of clothes or any attempt at communication with me, they led me to a strange warehouse-esque space. There were many humans there, all working on something, hunched over in deep concentration. Someone shoved me from behind and gestured for me to go join them.

            Panicked, I tried not to let my imagination run away and scare me with possibilities of what they were working on. Slowly, I approached them, and before I’d taken two steps, I heard a loud thud; they’d closed us in.

            The other…humans…were making some contraption. One of the girls told me in French what “we” were supposed to be doing. I didn’t speak the second official language fluently, but I decided to go on what I understood and follow the others’ (at least fifty of them) lead. As soon as I got close enough to see one of their eye colour, the door banged open, and in walked a vampire, followed by a whole group of them dressed in different-coloured attire. My ROV instincts screamed two clans.

            One of them�"a female this time�"grabbed my arm, dragging me back to the door I’d just come through. She stopped walking when she came face-to-face with the seemingly-leader of the others. I bumped into her back, causing her to tighten her grip on me and mutter what were probably curses in her language.

            Just as well, I thought bitterly despite my fear. I curse thee, foul inhuman villain, to suffer in the depths of hell and…yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Stupid b***h is yanking my arm out of its socket…

            After some harshly exchanged words, the leader handed over a wad of cash to the violent chick and she in turn handed me over.

            You’re a girl too, you know. Don’t let other girls be manhandled by these filthy men! You’d think another female would be against sexism, Jeez. This isn’t just about vampires versus humans, girl�"fight for our rights…

 

            My inner commentary didn’t disguise the fear I felt as the other group dragged me away. I had no notion of their plans for me, but they couldn’t be good. I was proven right when they drugged me even before shoving me into their sleek black car, with two cronies on either side�"again, both men.

•••                                •§•                               •••

I awakened to intense pain in my upper arms and ankles. Everything was fuzzy when I opened my eyes; probably the effects of the strong drug wearing off. Regardless of the clarity of my vision, it was immediately clear that the space I was confined in was very dimly lit.

            Upon turning my head to one side, I discovered a new horrifying detail: I was strapped down to a table that looked suspiciously like what I’d always imagined an autopsy table to look like. There were needles stuck into my arms; my wrists and ankles were tightly bound with belts to the table. Even my neck was strapped down.

            Breathe, I instructed myself.

            Much easier said than done. I thought I would pass out again, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen, even as the strain in my neck stopped me from breathing normally. I was still very much alert, and judging from the bloodred irises of the lab-coated vampire that entered then, he knew it too; he was reveling in the fact. I squirmed internally without giving away my disdain on the outside, pretended to have just woken up. I’d never believed that ignorance could be bliss; what one didn’t know could in fact hurt him/her. But no one said anything about playing dumb not being bliss.

            The “doctor” marched up to the table containing me, much like a soldier would march to battle in the name of honour and duty. He sat down in a chair next to it, checking monitors detailing my…well, some kind of biological information. He then retrieved something from a drawer to my right; held it up over the dim light above my face and flicked his thumb and pointer-finger on it. A vaccination? That didn’t add up in my head.

            Whatever it was, meant to protect from diseases or not, it terrified me. I’d always been afraid of getting needles�"this time, a crazy vampire would be presenting it to me, while I was strapped down to a stone-cold table in a room with no ventilation and with nothing but a thin shirt and jeans on me. This was not going to be pleasant.

            Might be a good idea to knock me out with a sleeping drug right about now…

            As my panic increased, the distance between the needle and my right arm decreased. I closed my eyes and thought of whatever happened to be the first calming method I had: Adelheid’s technique. Counting backwards from a hundred in French. It involved German and French, but I wasn’t trilingual; I got by with speaking English�"until I’d been taken by those vampires, anyway.

            Cent, quatre vingt dix nuef…God. What did I just get injected with?