Roxanne Fosch Files Collection

Chapter 1-2

I lunged for him, talons out. Straight for his throat. I didn"t know if a stake through the heart was the right method to kill a vampire, but decapitation was a sure way to kill anything living—or nonliving—or animated, or whatever it was they called a made vampire.

I hit something hard and for the fraction of a second thought I hit the mark. Just the time it took for my brain to process his bony fingers around my wrist, exactly where the fur and padded paw ended and my human wrist began.

I didn"t even see him move.

Without any pause or hesitation, I tried again with my free left talons. When I found both my wrists imprisoned by his bony fingers, I kicked his shin with my right cowboy boot, while simultaneously wrenching both my hands back with as much force as I could muster, slicing his hands in the process.

He howled, letting go of me and getting up, fangs out. I stumbled back a step and without losing momentum, kept going for the closet where I kept the broom I used to clean up my room so old Marian wouldn"t need to. As weapons went it was pretty lame and harmless, but it was all I could think of at the moment.

Despite the head start and the fact I was fast, I"d taken only two steps before he tackled me from behind. I fell with a loud oomph, almost banging my nose against the hard wood. I struggled, trying to free my legs, but his strength was tremendous, and I only managed to gain a few inches. Nevertheless, I kicked—more a hard shove—with the spare inches I had and heard the satisfying grunt of pain. Not waiting for him to recover, I put all my strength in my upper body and pulled myself—and him along—a few inches to the closet door and held on to the frame. Again, I struggled to free my legs and continued kicking/shoving every time I gained an inch or two.

“Stop it,” he snarled, voice guttural, arms tightening around my legs.

Inch by inch, I moved, hope filling my heart when the tips of my fingers brushed the handle of the broom.

Then something sharp pierced through the fabric of my pants, into the back muscles of my right shin. I stiffened when the vampire began sucking, paralyzed with fear. That was how vampires controlled their prey and made them slaves. By drinking their blood.

With a cry of despair and outrage, I pulled myself again with renewed determination, the frame of the closet creaking with indignation, the vampire"s fangs tearing through my muscles like scissors on thin paper. My hand brushed the handle of the broom again, but it slipped away. Finally my left foot came free and I stomped on his head once, twice, the muscles of my shin tearing with every kick. My leg slid, though his fangs still sucked, caught on a frenzied feeding, now embedded in the tendrils of my ankle. The pain was so overwhelming, it almost outdid reason. I pulled myself again, crying out with the agony of tearing flesh. I reached and grabbed the broom, and with a herculean effort of will, flipped my upper body and began thwacking the vampire on the side of the head until the handle broke and I had a makeshift stake.

I quickly stabbed him in the shoulder, and, as if he had just now realized I was fighting him, he let go of my leg and shot straight up and away.

I picked the other side of the broom, the one with the bristles—considerably shorter—and got up slowly, almost sinking back down when I put some weight on my right foot.

The vampire reached back and unhooked the handle of the broom from his shoulder, his malnourished face contorting with anger. There was an alien redness in his eyes, his fanged, opened mouth dripping with my blood.

I took a step back, careful to put as little pressure as possible on my right side. Regardless, I almost passed out when the pain zinged through the entire leg. My vision dimmed once, and I had to swallow bile twice. If I passed out, I would be waking up inside a cage. That is, if I ever woke up again.

Then all of a sudden, there was no more weight on the mangled leg. My relief lasted for less than a millisecond, the moment it took for me to realize I was dangling by the throat, the vampire"s b****y lips about two inches away.

It took my brain precious moments to shift gear and process the fact there was no longer any distance between us.

Shit, he was fast. There hadn"t been even a blur.

When someone dangles you by the throat, it hurts. It hurts a lot. I felt like my body was trying to detach itself from my head. Gravity pulled me down while his hand kept me upright. I grabbed his bony wrists, trying to diffuse some of the pressure, and was about to kick him again when I made the mistake of looking straight into his eyes.

Aside from the reddish alien sclera, the pupils had a red thin line surrounding it. It might have been there before, but I couldn"t remember. Even as my inner alarm went off telling me to break contact, I was wondering why I wanted to. I stopped struggling, let my hands fall to my sides and felt my face slacken. I was suffocating but couldn"t give a damn about it. I knew my leg throbbed like a motherfucker, but the pain didn"t register. My receptors malfunctioned.

The vampire put me back on my feet, and it wobbled with the weight, but he wanted me to stand, and for him I could endure anything.

Mind control wasn"t what I had expected it to be. I was totally there and aware, I knew it was wrong, I just didn"t care. The vampire"s pupils dilated for a moment, engulfing every part of his irises before contracting again, this time becoming a barely-perceptible pinprick. Trapping me inside. I was mesmerized. The warning in the back of my mind became a hardly audible alarm.

Then something happened—the feel of his control changed. I could feel him perusing inside my mind—a tickling-prickling sensation—as he leafed through my thoughts and memories as if I were an open book, just as casually as he had been leafing, only moments ago, through the magazine. I felt, rather than saw, him laughing at the comparison inside my head, and heard my inner voice screaming at me, “Do something!” But I was helpless, aware of his invasion, cringing from the violation of my most private thoughts and memories. I was like a ghost, following someone through a haunted mansion while he checked this room and that, ignoring the phantom completely.

He saw me as a child, on the yellow swing in front of the house, laughing at a beautiful blonde woman dressed in a dark green business suit with eyes as black as mine. Mother had just come from work and was telling me she"d gotten me a gift. I jumped out of the swing and ran to her, hugging her with gratitude and that innocent unconditional love only a child could give so freely. Now I was holding a big teddy bear and mother was telling me a bedtime story about fairy princesses.

Images of my childhood flashed by faster, jigsaw pieces of a life long tucked away, kept apart from all the torment and pain that followed and practically destroyed me. Mother taking me the first day to school, the bus that picked me up the very next day; my first-grade teacher; Tommy, the boy I used to have a crush on; my best friend Vicky, the troubles we got into together; me falling off a tree I climbed on a dare from Vicky. Faster and faster my memories moved as I grew, and the vampire absorbed everything, every detail, enjoying my helplessness.

The day the Paranormal Scientists Society came and took me away screaming, while my mother watched helplessly, framed by the front porch while it rained; the first time they threw me in a cell with a rabid wolf. Dr. Maxwell"s angry face the day I spat the concoction he wanted me to ingest back in his face; Dr. Maxwell injecting a concoction through an IV, monitors connected through small plugs all over my chest, as I lay shackled to the cold stainless examination table. Professor Anderson, my “tutor” in the years I spent in the PSS.

Fear began slowly transforming inside me, growing from a quivering puke green color… into yellow… into orange… into red. And it wanted to be let go.

My rage grew as the vampire explored every detail of my life—every private moment.

Reaching inside myself for that growing anger, I tried to take hold of it—and I couldn"t.

I tried again, but it remained unreachable, yet just a hair"s width away. For all the PSS"s claims of me being a super predator, there I was, unable to shield my mind, or move my limp arm and punch him… no nothing, not even an impotent twitch.

My anger, the thing I had learned to fear for the past ten years, that destructive otherness I kept suppressed inside in chains and strong will at all times… had become nothing but a useless emotion.

I was helpless to stop the vamp as he navigated through my memories. The memorable and the detestable.

And when he was done, instead of just pulling away, he began building suggestions in my mind. Making me want things. And oh, but I wanted it. Craved it, in fact. I"d just suffocate if I didn"t do as he said.

I wanted to go with him.

But not to the PSS.

No, we were going to be a team. He was going to teach me all sorts of things.

I was going to obey him. Everything he commanded, I would obey.