LoopHoles

Vladimir's POV (Continued)
















“w-w-water.” Only my superior hearing was able to decipher the barely whispered words.

I prowled back to him, giving him my undivided attention. “Water eh? I’m afraid I’ve got none for you. I do have news of your precious Josie though.”

He spasmed, then hacked painfully for several seconds. I waited until he tired himself out before continuing. “Are you trying to tell me something Arthur?”

“S-s-stay a-away f-from her.” Arthur had developed the terrible habit of stuttering ever since he came to my abode.

“And what will you do if I don’t?” I drawled.

“T-the p-pact. Y-you c-c-can't go anywhere n-near her!”

Hmm, interesting. For a man who was said to have been disowned by his backwards and very traditional family, he sure knew a lot about the biggest feat in the history of the supernatural world. What makes it more interesting was that he should have only known that vampires existed when he walked in on me two weeks ago while I was feeding. 

“Funny you should mention the pact. What is that exactly?” He blanched and turned his head to face away from me. I let him. “No matter. The pact can’t stop me. You should know that for every law, there is a loophole. I didn’t go to Josie, she came to me of her own accord.” He emitted a truly distressing sound, one I was certain a dying deer would make and tried to resume his fetal position. His jutting flab made it hard for his knees to meet his chin though.

“She can’t do that. She can’t. They should have stopped her.” He muttered deriously, not stopping to breathe as he mumbled over and over. Might I add that his stuttering has disappeared?

“Maybe I can get her to bring Anna with?”

Arthur completely lost it. He rolled over again -he was getting more exercise here than he had ever done in his whole life- and glared at me with a hatred that ran deep into the depths of his soul. “STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTERS YOU MONSTER!” He heaved out laboriously. I raised a brow at his outburst and he spat at me before he concluded shakily. “I hope you rot in the deepest pit of hell.”

I lifted my shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “If the myths are to be believed, vampires came from the depths of hell, so you are just sending me back home.” I drifted closer to him before sitting down on the possibly infected loor and crossing my legs Indian style. Once he made eye contact, I recited to him the rules of the pact he was relying so heavily on. “Did you know that the pact was signed by Kostov on behalf of the hunters, my brother Nikitin on behalf of all Vampires and Shayla on behalf of the witches? That means that there is no witch, vamp or hunter alive that can go against the pact, no matter how much they want to. According to the rules, no hunter, vampire or witch may take the lives of any human for whatever reason. Neither side can engage in battle unless the council gives the say so.” The council was meant to have two representatives of each race but somehow had three hunters, one vampire and two witches. “No vampire, witch or hunter may encroach on the territory of another race without permission. The council reserves the right to punish offenders by whatever means they deem necessary.” That usually meant that the hunters took away more and more of our territory.

Arthur nodded in angry agreement. “Yes. That means that you can’t hurt my children.”

 I shushed him. ”I’m giving a lecture here. Those are the important rules, but not all of them.” I flashed him a smile full of fangs. “Now, the loopholes.” Arthur froze like a deer in headlights and glanced at me warily. “We can’t hurt humans, but nothing in the rules says that humans can’t hurt us. There is no punishment for those humans even if they happen to be our familiar.” A flash of panic in Arthur’s eyes and I knew he already had an idea where I was going with this. An astute businessman, that’s what he was. “Are you aware that the pact says that all of the three races are allowed to defend themselves if their territory is encroached upon? And tonight, I will be having two lovely ladies for dinner.

The fire in Arthur’s eyes burned brighter and he jutted his chin out defiantly. “You might want to read the rules again, Vladimir. You told me just a moment ago that Josie is coming to you. She wouldn’t have found the coven unless you invited her.” The fire in his voice was reminiscent of the defiance in Josie’s words earlier today. I liked seeing it in Josie. Coming from Arthur, not so much.

“That may be true, but I never said I invited her now did I? What if she just was just given a suggestion of where I resided and she plans to show up unannounced? Or isn’t that something Josie can do?” The fire drained out of his eyes comically fast. I’d thought as much. Someone who was willing to organize a press conference and blatantly lie against a public figure and law enforcement in one fell swoop had little to no limit of the boundaries they wouldn’t cross to get their way.

“Oh, my dear Arthur, the options are limitless. Even if she was here by invitation, weak humans often always encounter……accidents. It could be the fault of another person or theirs. You have no idea the things a human could do to their bodies under compulsion. Once, I saw a man throw himself out of the window on a third floor onto a steel pike in the yard. The pike went through his gut and came out on the other end, but still, he didn’t die. But his master had told him he could stop only after the sixtieth jump, so he extracted himself from the pike and went to the third floor to repeat the jump. It took three jumps before he died, but he didn’t stop until he was, not even when his entrails were dragging behind him.” Arthur gulped, the whites of his eyes gaping wide as the fight rushed out of his body. “that’s a bit crude, don’t you think? Yeah, I don’t like that option much either. I quite like her defiance. Ah ah!” I clapped my hands in a eureka moment. Turning my wide smile at him, I asked, “What if I made her my childe?” He recoiled from me so fast, his skull smacked against the wall. I followed his retreat and tried to reason with him. “Don’t be so hasty. Just think about it. If I turn her, she will be one of us. Yes she might not be able to walk in the sun again but she will live for eternity. She is very reckless and mischievous as a human, can you imagine the level of havoc she will wreak when she is a vampire?”

He clasped his two hands together in supplication and whispered with trembling lips, “P-please. I beg you, please don’t do this.” Not only his hands, but his entire body was shaking in fear. I found it ironic that he was more terrified now than he had been since he got here. The irony was that I have tortured him all sort of ways, knocked off three of teeth, cut off two of his fingers, broken several bones in his body and even made him defecate on his body, but today, the one day I hadn’t tortured him was the day he was begging me. I really should have gone after his daughters first.

“Give me something in exchange.” I snarled in his face.

“w-what?” He mumbled. The stutter was back.

“Give me worthwhile information and I will spare your daughter’s life.”

His air of despair only sunk deeper. “I don’t know anything. I have never met anyone with the name Puhvel. My family disowned me because of Nora and ever since then, I have never gone back to mexico.”

Really? “But you are not from Mexico.” I admonished softly. 

His brows furrowed in confusion. “I am from mexico.”

I didn’t dispute his claim. What was the point? His heritage was another memory locked from him. I moved on, knowing that if I persevered, I would find something the witches missed. “What do you know about the pact?”

“N-nothing. I only know the same things you just mentioned. I don’t even know how I know that a pact even exists.” He wrung his hands together and tears leaked from his eyes. He was moments away from bawling his eyes out, I just knew it.

Moving on, “What do you know about the seven sisters?”

An infinitesimal shift of his eyes. “Nothing.” He assured me quickly.  Why humans still tried to lie to me, I would never understand. Didn’t they understand I could sense their heartbeats? Smell their fear?

“You are lying to me Arthur. I will give you just one chance to tell the truth. Lie to me again and I will walk out that door. And the next time you see Josie, she won’t be your daughter anymore. Hell, she won’t even be human.”

"How do I know you won't turn her anyway?"

"You don't." I answered simply. He flinched and glared at me but I waited him out before continuing, "But if you give me what I seek, I will have plausible reason to hurt Josie, not when you are still here for me to visit my anger on."

He flinched again, his pallor unnaturally pasty. There is a major possibility that Arthur might die of a heart attack if this continued for much longer. He licked his cracked lips before beginning haltingly, "I d-don't know much."

"Then tell me the little you know."