Chapter 17 pt. 2

I ran through streets not knowing where I was going or where I was and I couldn’t stop until I was in a Indian restaurant looking confused at an equally confused man behind a steam table.

“Where did he go?” I wondered aloud.

The man rattled off a string of words in another language. I couldn’t make out anything except the word for police that was semi recognizable. I sighed and walked out of the restaurant while he was still going on. I sighed again standing outside on the curb. I had no idea where I was or how I was going to get to the police station.
So I started walking in the vague direction that my gut told me to go.
Walking gave me time to come up with what I was going to say when I arrived. Without any identification, I was going to have to be clever about how to make this work. I was so focused on planning my entrance and speech that when I finally looked up later, I realized that I was even more completely lost.
I cursed and pulled out my phone to try the GPS but what the map said and the street signs I was reading were completely different. I tried typing in “police station” but the directions it gave me took me to the building I recognized as The Nest and that was not the police station I wanted to go to. So naturally, I tried voice recognition, thinking that it might work if I sounded desperate enough.
My frustration built every time I said “Police Station” at my phone, but I didn’t think about changing my tactic or what I might look like to someone passing by. I guess I must have looked pretty crazy standing in the median of a busy street shouting at my phone because the police came to me.
The blue and yellow checkers of a London Scotland Yard cruiser pulled up near me, lights flashing but no siren was on.
“There a problem, miss?” called the passenger, elbow relaxing out the window as he leaned toward me. He wore an expression that said his intentions were something much more nefarious than getting me safely home.
I looked him over nervously, noting his expression and how far he leaned out the window. Slowly, my phone made its way back to my pocket and I scrambled for a response to his question. “N-no sir. I’m fine. I just got myself turned around.”
“American, aye? Wa’s a nice girl like you doin’ this side a town? You lookin fer sumthin special?”
“I’m fine.” I repeated, probably more to convince myself than to answer him. “I’m just going to retrace my steps and…”
He cut me off loudly. “Aw! Dawnt be like that, love! We ain’t turnin’ ya in. How’s bout a pint wit Billy and me first? Get ya in the mood.”
I nearly stepped into the opposite side of the street as I backed away from the vehicle. Good thing it wasn’t a busy street, or was that actually a bad thing?
“No thanks, I just need to go,” I kept trying.
“Have other pointments to keep?” he pressed, looking irritated.
“No, no, no, I’m not… it’s just that… I can just…” I babbled, nervously trying to form a sentence as I looked around for an escape. I should have just run but I didn’t think about being a vampire with vampire speed. I just assumed that they would follow me and they had a car.
He was getting out of the car now. I could hear Billy snickering from the driver’s seat. If I ran, he would try to tackle me, I thought. I also thought that police were supposed to be middle-aged white men with itchy trigger fingers, not horny twenty-somethings looking to score a hooker.
“What’s yur name love?” he grinned like the Cheshire cat, dangerous and about to get exactly what he wanted even if I put up a fight.
I should have run but I waited another moment before deciding to leave. Another moment that allowed him to grab my wrist and yank me against his chest. Taking advantage of my surprise he had his hands on my breasts, taking his fill of the feel of my body against his.
The voice in my head screamed for me to wake up and get away but he gripped my arms as soon as I tried to step away from him. I could have escaped if I had remembered that I was a vampire but I didn’t. I was just panicking and losing control of the situation entirely.
“Come ave a good time wit Billy and me. We ain’t that bad and if ya play nice, ya might get a tip,” he teased in my ear. His breath was so rancid, I nearly puked as I tried again to get free of him.
Billy was getting out of the car, seeing me struggle against his partner.
“Just let me go. You don’t understand,” I tried.
“Calm yer tits woman and git in the car. We ain’t got ter pay ya to get what we want if ya can’t do as yer told,” he grumbled, shoving me into the side of the car.
“Check ‘er fer knives. She’s all wiley an ya know bout the one Collin brought in las week,” Billy instructed, prompting the other to hold me against the car with his body and move his hands over my curves.
I opened my mouth to beg to be released but then he reached between my legs, leaning in to smell my hair and something in me changed. I threw my head back, smashing it into his nose and grabbed his hand, yanking it out at an angle to break his wrist.
His shouts of pain were like shots of adrenaline. I drank one in and planned to make my getaway but Billy had a taser pointed at me. I thought it was funny. He didn’t say a word, he just held out the taser, eyes wide now that the tables had turned on them and I was the one with the Cheshire grin.
“Raven!” Leo shouted from behind me, making Billy jump and pull the trigger of the taser and hold onto it. Only two of the darts hit me one in my left leg and one in my left arm, but it was enough pain to shock my system out of whatever had changed.
I yanked myself away from the darts, pulling the taser from Billy’s hands to clatter against the pavement. “OW! What the fuck!”
Leo came to me and pulled the darts from my skin, looking me over quickly before saying anything. “Go across the street and wait for me. I’ll clean this up and then we’ll talk.”
I wanted to protest but the look he gave me, said I wouldn’t like what he did if I tried anything else. I felt like a child in trouble so I didn’t listen to Leo as he spoke to my assailants or look back to watch what he did to them. I just stood across the street rubbing the spots where the darts had hit and thinking about how mad he was going to be with me for going off on my own in the first place.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he growled, taking my arm roughly and yanking me away from the cops.
“Let go of me. I’m not leaving, I get it,” I returned, trying to get my arm back.
“You’ve got that right,” he snorted, pulling me closer to him and denying my attempts at freedom. “Do you even know what you’ve done? Did you think about what the hell you were going to even do? This has to be one of the stupidest things you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I got lost and then those fucks assaulted me.”
“You broke his arm and his nose.”
“Was I supposed to let him fuck me?”
He shoved me toward his car, “Get in.”
“Leo!” I shouted, trying to resist the urge to hit his car.
He stood with the car between us, staring at me. “Just get in the car before I put you there,” he growled under his breath, not moving except for his lips.
“So I’m supposed to play the helpless damsel, am I? I’m supposed to let a human rape me and let you order me around, right? Well, fuck you Leo! Fuck you and your manly bullshit. I’ll walk to Nyctophilia and stay with Warren. You’ll be fine finding that pungent fuck by yourself.”
Before he could answer, I took off down an alley and up a fire escape to get the view of the city that I needed to get to where I wanted to be. He didn’t follow me but on a whim, I followed him as he drove off. I wanted to see how badly he would get his butt kicked without me.
From a building over, I watched him get out of his car in front of a building labeled “The New Scotland Yard.” No wonder I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Leo disappeared inside the building and I waited but my patience was already thin. The longer he took, the closer I got, until I was standing next to his car, leaning against a lamppost. I waited there for nearly ten minutes, pondering my next move, until a window above me shattered and out popped the fat, smelly man we had been ordered to find.
I straightened. “Need a ride?”
As if to read my mind and my half-formed plan, Leo’s car chirped behind me. I could feel him watching me from the broken out window but I didn’t look up at him.
“Who are you?” the man puffed, strangely out of breath. Maybe his size changed the vampire rules I had read in romance novels.
I went to him slowly, catlike, waiting to get him on my hook.He ate it up like a plate full of double chocolate brownies.His eyes undressed every inch of me and then some before they rested on my breasts which were nearly out of my dress due to all the running and climbing.
“You can call me whatever you want,” I purred, lifting his chin so that our eyes locked. Then on impulse I whispered, “You will come with me without a fight and do whatever I command.”
His eyes glazed and he nodded.
Leo walked up to us with his phone held to his ear. He acted as if he didn’t care that the guy might run away and I panicked. I grabbed the guy by the shoulders and slammed him against the light post I had previously been leaning on, holding him tight in case he tried to run.
“Whoa darling, I like it rough but don’t bruise the merchandise,” he laughed.
“Raven, he’s fine. He’ll do exactly as you told him to. He can’t run; you compelled him.”
I looked over my shoulder at Leo, confused.
“I’ll explain it later, just let him go. Transport is on the way.”
The man’s eyes went big. “You’re with him?!”
“Tell him to stay put and come get a jacket before you fall out of your dress,” Leo ordered.
I obeyed because I was confused at what had just happened. When I moved away from the man, he acted like his feet were stuck to the pavement. If it weren’t for the fear in his eyes, I wouldn’t have believed that it worked.
“Are you still mad at me then?” I asked as I arrived at his car and slid my arms into the jacket he held open for me.
“Let’s call it even for tonight. We both acted stupid,” he mumbled. “Thank you for being here. It would have been really embarrassing if I had lost him.”
I felt his chin on my shoulder and his nose in my hair before he pulled me by the waist to him.
“You should have given me another option for clothes when we got up,” I whispered, leaning into him.
“We wouldn’t have caught our guy if you were wearing more clothes,” he teased.
“Come on! This isn’t fair!” our capture complained, doing a sort of dance as he tried to free his feet. Fat jumped and moved like it had a mind of its own. I couldn’t hide the giggle that bubbled up from inside me.
“Your ride is turning the corner. Just be patient,” Leo laughed.
I looked past the dancing fat and noticed the unmarked navy blue van with no back windows driving calmly towards us. They pulled up behind Leo’s car and two men got out.
“No, you don’t understand!” the man begged.
“Behave and obey these nice men,” I told him as the two men approached him.
“Let Kris know when you get back. He’ll want to know,” Leo instructed as they walked our fat dancer to the back of the van.
“Listen to me! I didn’t bite anyone! You don’t understand!”
Leo was nibbling on my ear, trying to get my attention. “Let’s go get a drink. I think we’ve earned it before we actually head to work.”
“Let’s go to Warren’s so I can get some different clothes,” I replied.
“You’re no fun.”
“We need to get me back to normal.”
He nodded, sobering his expression from excitement to serious. “Good point. Get in and we’ll go to Warren’s.”
I took his hand in the car. “I’m sorry I took off. I didn’t really have control of my feet. Once I had his smell they just moved without me.”
“You saved me from being embarrassed so we’ll call it a wash,” he replied giving my hand a squeeze. “Things will go back to normal soon.”