Witchcraft (#2 Witchblood Series) (19 page)

I was out of luck, as I soon found
myself at a dead end, my route blocked by a large warehouse with
fifteen foot high wire fencing which cast long shadows in the early
morning gloom. I turned back to retrace my steps and felt my
stomach lurch. The vampire and his mate had stopped at the end of
the alleyway and were talking to somebody through the window of a
large black Mercedes. The Mercedes had turned into the alleyway and
was facing me, its engine purring as it blocked the route in and
out.

I had the warehouse behind me, which had
a fence I could surely scale, but security cameras would film me
and land me in trouble with the supernatural community, for
revealing my nature. To my right were the blank backs of buildings,
their paint peeling off like rust on an old bicycle. The left
seemed more promising, with three wooden gates and the back
entrances of the shops I had seen lining the high street. If I
could jump the gates and the doors were unlocked, I could
potentially escape that way. I still wasn’t sure that they knew who
I was. I told myself it was still possible they thought I was easy
prey, and if I was right, they’d be in for a shock.

Yet I couldn’t risk finding out, so I
ran over to the nearest gate and felt relief flood my system as the
hinges creaked open against my touch, and I fell into a small
courtyard littered with pizza boxes and takeaway rubbish. I dodged
the bins and ran to the door. Of course, as it was barely seven in
the morning, the business was closed and the door was locked. Dare
I use magic to open the door? Could I? I mentally scanned the
spells I had learnt so far, but with the sound of the car
screeching to a halt behind the gate, I couldn’t think of anything
useful and resorted to banging on the door instead. Maybe someone
lived in the flat above, who could open the door for me…

‘
Jess, you’re going to be late for
that meeting you told me about,’ the vampire from the café said,
stepping into the courtyard.

‘
Um, I didn’t tell you my name…
I’m not Jess, you’ve got the wrong girl,’ I said, mentally kicking
myself for being so lame.

‘
Oh, silly me, and here I was
thinking you were here to meet up with a girl called Alex. No
wonder I scared you. My mistake, goodbye.’ He turned and suddenly
left through the gate. I heard his steps retreat and the car door
open.

Damn! This was it, my chance to
find Alex. Clearly they knew who I was and yet they hadn’t
attempted to attack me, as everyone presumed they would. Maybe Cole
meant what he said in his letter. Maybe he
did
just want to talk… then again, no, I was
kidding myself. I knew it. I knew I was walking into a trap,
but
they
knew where Alex was
and I didn’t. I felt my body turn from the door and towards the
gate. I could hear the engine idling, before it suddenly revved as
the car manoeuvred in the alley, to drive back out. I ran the last
few steps and bounded out of the gates, skidding to a stop in front
of the car.

‘
I want to see Alex,’ I
said.

‘
Jump in then,’ he said, leaning
across and opening the passenger door for me.

I could hear Luke, Daniel and Eva all
screaming at me in my head. They would all kill me if I got in this
car… if Cole didn’t kill me first, but I didn’t have a choice. If I
refused, I wasn’t at all sure they’d let me go, and if they did we
may never find Alex. I also had no idea what Cole would do with a
redundant girl whose life was a threat to his reputation. I didn’t
want to find out, so I got in the car. I figured if I needed to, I
could telepathically contact Daniel and then he could tell Luke
where I was, but for now I didn’t see the need in panicking my
friends.

‘
So, I gather you must be
Sebastian’s new pet half-breed, Jessica?’ the vampire said to me
from the driver’s seat.

I didn't know how to answer, as I would
have loved to make a snappy retort, but I wasn’t sure either who he
was, or what he was capable of.I was outnumbered, so I decided the
best course of action was to stay silent.

The couple that had followed me were
still guarding the end of the alleyway, and the other couple from
the café, I now noticed, were sitting in the back of the car. I’d
been mistaken about the two girls, as only one of them had been
human - the one in the car was a vampire. The guy asking the
question was the same one I spoke to in the café. His hair was
glossy brown and swept to one side, more like an Armani model than
a Justin Bieber lookalike. He looked young, maybe early twenties,
and his couture skinny black jeans and faux goth t-shirt did little
to hide his perfectly-defined body. As he appeared to be waiting
for an answer, I resorted to a teen’s best defence… I shrugged!

‘
Well Jessica, I’m very pleased to
meet you, and pleased you heeded my little note and came alone.
Good girl. By the way, I’m Cole.’

‘
You’re Cole? But you’re so…’ I
was going to say young, and then it dawned on me as to how stupid
that would sound. I already knew he was hundreds of years old, but
looking at him I just couldn’t match the Cole I had heard such
stories about with the cute, posh boy sitting next to
me.

As I faltered, Cole grinned and raised a
single eyebrow.

‘
So? What exactly?’ he
said.

‘
Um sorry, you just don’t look how
I expected,’ I mumbled. Feeling my cheeks flushing, I turned to
stare out of the window.

‘
Do we ever? But I shall take it
as a compliment that Sebastian and Daniel obviously think so highly
of me as to instil such fearsome visions of me in their pets. Now
you see, I am not so different from them after all,’ he
said.

‘
Why did you take Alex then? And
why did you threaten me with your note?’ I said, suddenly feeling
braver, ‘Will you take me to see her?’

‘
I’m sorry if you took my note as
a threat, but I didn’t want the inconvenience of an army of angels
accompanying you. I know Sebastian has not yet made you take an
Oath of Fealty, and I have heard you are free of your bond with
Daniel, so as you are free to do as you please I thought we should
be acquainted.’

‘
I have no intentions of leaving
Manchester,’ I said, realising my impulsivity was a mistake from
the moment I opened my mouth, and watched his eyes
harden.

‘
You shouldn’t be so impulsive,
young one. Remember, I have much to offer and much to take away,’
he said, suddenly putting the car in gear and taking his foot off
the brake.

‘
Where are you taking me?’ I said,
beginning to panic.

‘
To see Alex, where else?’ he
replied, his smile returning.

When we got to the end of the alley, he
raised his hand at the waiting couple and with a quick nod they
turned and walked off. Cole then took a right, in the opposite
direction to that which we had walked, and after a short distance
we went right again and then left. I stared out of the window and
tried to memorise the route the car took in case I found myself
needing an escape, hopefully with Alex in tow, but it was
impossible. Brixton, it seemed, was a maze of back streets and Cole
seemed to take every possible turn. It dawned on me that he was
purposely taking a convoluted route in order to confuse me, and it
was working. I had soon lost count of the rights and lefts, and had
no clue of the general direction we had come from.

We ended up driving along a main street,
but I hadn’t been able to find the road name, as he seemed to
bypass corners and junctions by cutting down side-streets. We
finally turned off the main road and slowed to a stop in another
alleyway, at the back of a dilapidated church, which appeared to
have some kind of nineteen sixties concrete-box structure added on
to the side of it.

The instant the car stopped, I opened
the door and leapt out, but it was pretty hopeless - after all they
had the same unnatural speed I did, and were only seconds behind
me. And really, what was I planning to do?

‘
Where are you going Jess?’ Cole
said, as he sauntered around the front of the car, holding a large
hypodermic needle in one hand, while the vampire couple closed in
from the rear.

‘
You don’t need to use that, drugs
don’t work on us anyway…and I’m clearly outnumbered,’ I said,
holding my chin high, and meeting his eyes. I refused to let him
think he could so easily threaten me. They might outnumber me, but
I had my magic, and I needed to find Alex before I used it. The
syringe didn’t bother me, as Eva had told me months ago, in Exodus
when we came across a creep with date-rape drugs, how our fast
metabolisms would burn up any drugs too fast to be a concern to us.
Cole was obviously only playing with me.

‘
My problem Jessica, is that you
are a witch. It is clear from your eye colour that the initiation
was a success, and if you managed to neutralise Aaron
before
you were initiated, it would
be reckless of me to ignore your potential newfound abilities. So I
apologise for this measure, and you are right of course…this dose
would do nothing to you, but act as a very good decoy…’

Pain stabbed momentarily into my thigh,
piercing straight through my jeans, sending freezing liquid
coursing through my veins.

‘
You see, Alison’s syringe is
filled with industrial strength horse tranquiliser, from a helpful
veterinarian. This should put you out long enough for us to safely
transport you to your accommodation.’

A wave of fear and panic unfurled and
coursed around my body. This I had not planned. As my eyes widened
with terror, a hand clamped over my mouth from behind, just as I
tried unsuccessfully to scream. Seconds later, a strong arm
encircled my waist to catch my weight as the tranquilizer began to
take effect. Desperately I tried to contact Daniel, open my mind
and reach out to him. It was my last chance, to save myself and to
save Alex.

‘
Jess where are you?’ His voice
came to me, panicked, mirroring my total terror.

The drug was working too fast and my
brain wouldn’t work, all I could do was open the barriers I had so
carefully built-up to keep him out and let him read my memories of
the past few hours. I stared at the building in front of me,
willing him to see all the details in front of me and commit them
to his memory.

‘
Jess, Jess…use your magic. Do
whatever you need to do to get out of there. Stay awake Jess…’
Daniels words echoed far away, as I felt him slowly fade from my
mind.

As my body began to slump, my captor
lifted me from the ground and I used what was left to arch my back
and kick my legs, a last show of defiance before my world went
black.

Chapter Fifteen

I awoke to find myself underground, in
the cellars of the old church. To three sides I had two feet thick
stone walling with one tiny, iron-barred window, looking out at
ground level. The fourth wall comprised the same vampire proofed,
iron bars I had come across in Sebastian’s cells.

Where was Alex? Was it all a hoax as Eva
had suggested?

I strained my eyes against the gloom.
The daylight barely broke through the tiny window, due to overgrown
shrubbery, which would have perfectly concealed its location. I had
been laid on a narrow bed, with a grey blanket and pillow. I smiled
slightly when I saw that they had left me both a glass of water and
a glass of blood… they still weren’t sure what I was… or what I
drank. The tranquiliser had blurred my vision, giving me an
almighty headache, and my mouth felt parched, as if I’d been
walking for days in the heat of an Indian summer. My skin felt dry,
cracked, and I yearned for blood, but I resisted. Let them keep
guessing a while longer.

I stood up and rubbed my fingers through
my hair, massaging the pain in the back of my head, as I took in my
surroundings. My cell was bare, and all I could see beyond the bars
was a a stone passageway, and another set of bars, fitted to the
opposite cell.

‘
Jessie?’

I looked across my cell,through
the bars, in the direction of the voice I knew so well.
Could it be? How could she recognise me? What must
she think of me?

‘
Alex?’ I asked, as my
supernatural eyesight finally sorted itself out, focused through
the murk and found the friend I’d been waiting months to
see.

She stood at the bars of her cage,
peering through at me, her eyes wide, her face emaciated. Alex had
always been skinny compared to me, but now she looked ill, her
shoulders jutting out through the grubby thin sweater she was
wearing, her cheeks hollow and black rings circling her eyes.

In a second I had cleared the distance
between my bed and the bars,stretching my hand out towards her, but
she pulled back quickly ‘Can it be true? I thought they were lying
to me. Are you really one of them?’ She whispered, her eyes
sparkling with tears which began to spill onto her cheeks.

‘
Yes, it’s me, Jessie. Don’t be
scared please… I’ve wanted to see you so much,’ I said quietly. ‘I
came to find you Alex.’

‘
Are you… Jessie, you don’t look
like them. Your eyes, they’re green, but they said you’re one of
them. Hell, I don’t believe this, I didn’t believe any of this
until they started… feeding. Jessie, they bit me… over and over
again.’ She sunk slowly to the floor, folding in on herself, tears
now falling unchecked as she avoided my eyes.

Anger coursed round my body, anger at
everyone. They’d been feeding from her, biting her, harming her,
unchecked for three extra days because Daniel, Eva, Sebastian and
even Luke refused to believe that Cole would allow a human to be
harmed. As if he cared about their damn rules. I was going to get
us out of here, they wouldn’t touch her again.