Conversion (Page 53)

The bouncy road jolted Teren to alertness and he cried out in continual pain. When the bumps became a rhythm that wasn’t stopping, he clamped his mouth shut and grabbed my hand. He squeezed so tight I thought he might break me. I’d have let him. I brushed back his hair from his now slick forehead and whispered what encouragement I could. Struggling to remain conscious, he closed his eyes and nodded.

Eventually the jarring stopped. Eventually the sound of the tires crunching along a dirt path stopped. Eventually the camper stopped. I’m pretty sure that’s when my heart stopped, too. Teren opened his eyes and let out a sharp exhale of relief. Well, as much relief as he could possibly feel right now. With glazed eyes he turned to look at me and, needing comfort as well as wanting to give it, I kissed him. With tight lips, he returned my kiss.

Abruptly the camper door swung open and surprised, we broke apart. A large man, taller and wider than Teren, with coarse, graying stubble that looked as hard and unwelcoming as the man’s personality must be, entered the vehicle that now felt tiny. "Well, isn’t that nice. Kissing your soon-to-be dead lover goodbye, huh? Sweet." His voice had a gravely edge to it that was as unpleasant as everything else about him. A scar across his lower lip buckled the skin as he smiled. "It’d be even sweeter, if he weren’t a spawn of pure evil."

He stepped into the small kitchen area and I protectively placed myself in front of Teren. "Please, let us go. We’re just-"

He took another step to stand right in front of me, and I noticed the wide open door behind him. He crisply cut me off. "Don’t even try and play innocent." He pointed a dirty finger at Teren, who weakly raised his head and looked up at him with defiance bravely etched on his face. "I know exactly what he is." The man glared at me. "And you too…vampire whore."

My mouth dropped. I’m not sure what shocked me more-him knowing that Teren was a vampire, or him calling me a whore. The scarred smile returned as he took in my shocked expression. "Didn’t think I knew what he was?"

"What do you want with me?" Teren quietly asked through his tightly clenched jaw.

The man’s smile left him and his dark, close-set eyes narrowed as he looked down on Teren, like he was nothing more than dirt the man had scraped off his shoe. "I want what God has commanded of me. I want to destroy all of your kind." His dark eyes flared with a zealot light. "I will end every abomination on this Earth."

Teren’s clenched jaw loosened in shock at hearing the man’s passionate words. I started shivering, as I blocked as much of Teren as I could.

"He is not an abom-"

I didn’t get a chance to finish my brilliant rebuttal. The man reached out and fisted my hair with his massive palm. He jerked my head away from Teren and my body had no choice but to follow. He tossed me and my prickling scalp into the bench seat at the rickety table.

His finger landed on my chest with a force that I’m sure bruised me. "Your opinion on the matter doesn’t interest me, whore." He motioned back to Teren. He was biting his lip to stop himself from crying out in pain as he attempted to move his body, to help me in some small way. "Your life became irrelevant the minute you let that feed off you." He leaned in close and his musky odor sickened me. His eyes flicked down my body. "And you let him inside you…an unholy beast…" He spat on the floor next to the table. "You disgust me."

Embarrassment and rage flashed through me. "Right back at you, a**hole!"

He smirked, then slapped me. Hard. My head was suddenly facing the window and my ears were ringing. My jaw felt disconnected from my body and I could feel a warm trickle from a line of blood trailing down my chin. Apparently, I’d cut my lip on my teeth. Wonderful. I’d never been "bitch-slapped" before. I found I didn’t like it.

I wiped the blood off with the back of my hand and slowly swiveled my head at the sound of Teren struggling and in pain. I turned to see the man watching in amusement as Teren unsuccessfully attempted to stand and defend me. Tears of pain were in his eyes as he tried to move his wrecked legs. He was breathing heavy, and soft whimpers were escaping him. His face paled to a sickening ashen color; he looked like he was going to pass out again.

The man let out a cruel laugh. "No fun when you can’t heal yet, is it?" He leaned over Teren and placed his hands on his knees. "That’s when you’re easiest to catch, you know. When you’re still mostly human…and weak."

"I will rip your throat out," Teren growled. Anger brightened his eyes and a deep snarl rose from his chest.

The man laughed again. Straightening, he kicked Teren’s legs on the floor. So much pain instantly filled Teren’s face that he couldn’t even cry out. His mouth dropped and he gasped as he struggled for air. He seemed incapable of doing anything else. Eyes fluttering, his head dropped back on the chair.

"Teren!" I started to rise, determined to help him somehow, when the man stuck his finger on my chest again. "Stay," he commanded. I froze, pure hatred in my eyes as I glared up at him.

He smirked as he looked down on me. The scar on his lip made the move unnaturally menacing. He regarded me with cold eyes. "Do you love this evil thing?" He nudged Teren’s toe, making him cry out.

"Stop it," I snapped.

"Do you?" he asked quietly.

A tear rolled down my cheek as I watched Teren start to come back to consciousness. "Yes," I whispered. My eyes shot up to the man. "And he’s not evil. He’s a good man."

Laughing, the man leaned over me. "He’s not even truly human. He’s not a man."

Wanting him to back up, I did something I never thought I would do-I spat in his face. The man didn’t seem too shocked by the display, and calmly wiped his face with the sleeve of his army jacket. Straightening, he patted the knife on his belt. I froze as I remembered that this man was dangerous…and armed.

His rough voice dropped an octave. "Here is what’s going to happen." He pointed at me. "You are going to help me move this," he kicked Teren’s legs, and I flinched as he cried out in pain, "or I can do it all by myself." His lips curled into a cruel smile.

I swallowed as I imagined just how gentle he’d be with Teren’s beaten body. I gave him a stiff nod and the man motioned for me to stand. Warily, I stood beside the table. My eyes never left the man’s hard face. He bent down for Teren and I glanced back at the open door. Freedom was staring me in the face. I immediately ignored it, as Teren gasped in pain. The man had gathered his legs into his arms and was starting to lift him. Teren was struggling not to scream. I wasn’t going anywhere without him.

"What are you doing? Let me take his legs!" I yelled, as I ran around to Teren’s shoulders. I attempted to lift his upper body so he was more level. The icy rush of adrenaline coursing through me made it possible, and I lifted Teren securely, if not easily. Teren’s head dropped back to my shoulder, as he passed out again from the pain.

The man roughly lifted his legs as he smirked at me. "Did you think I was going anywhere near his teeth? I’m not stupid, sweetheart."

"I disagree. He’s gonna kill you, you know."

The man laughed and looked at Teren’s limp form in our hands. "I doubt that…but it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried." He looked back up to me. "He is evil, after all."

I bit back my angry retort as the man started to move backwards out of the camper. Teren groaned, and his head lolled side to side as we made our way down the couple of steps at the back of the vehicle. I tried to be gentle with my half of Teren, but the man couldn’t have cared less about his bloody half, and we jarred him with every step down. Teren came to briefly at the bottom. He lifted his head off my shoulder and made a pained noise before dropping it down again. I kissed his head and whispered that it would be okay, as I felt a couple of his tears hit my collarbone. He was in so much pain…

I was so focused on keeping pace with the man holding Teren’s legs, that I barely noticed the reddish-brown, dusty dirt under my feet. I started to struggle with Teren’s weight, as my momentary rush of strength started to ebb. When my feet hit wooden steps, I looked up from where I’d been intently studying the circular pattern on Teren’s t-shirt.

We were at an old farmhouse that looked like it had been abandoned in the early nineteen hundreds. The porch had missing floorboards, the front door was half off its hinges, and the windows were long gone. They had been boarded over with faded planks of wood in an X pattern. The man started up the steps, which looked about ready to cave inward, and I carefully followed him, trying to readjust my hold on Teren without shaking him too badly.

We finally made it around the missing planks in the porch, and through the half-destroyed door, and entered a small room with a rat-infested couch. I automatically started shifting to the couch, wanting to set Teren down, but the man turned down a side hallway. Teren groaned as his body went in two different directions. Cursing, I adjusted my grip and followed the a**hole who’d abducted us. He led us to a lone door in a rickety hallway. The door had an iron bar padlocked across it. The lock was open and the bar was raised-awaiting its prisoners. He turned the doorknob after unceremoniously dropping one of Teren’s legs. Teren screamed at that.

The man swung the door inward, exposing a pitch-black opening that seemed to devour all light that tried to touch it. I did not want to follow him in there. Everything in my body wanted to run while the man was preoccupied with flipping on a light switch, exposing a steep set of stairs that surely led down into Hell. But I couldn’t run with Teren, and there was no way I was running without him, so I gathered my courage and made the conscious decision to follow the man when he picked Teren’s leg back up and started down the steps.

He carefully backed down the poorly constructed wooden staircase. They were the kind of stairs that had large gaps between each step and no backing, so with every long drop you were just positive that a hand was going to reach out from behind and grab your ankles, making you fall and crash into the ground below. But somehow we safely made it down those long steps, Teren groaning with each one, and started walking through a cellar.

I hate cellars. My aunt had one in her house and when I was four, I was accidentally locked inside it for a few hours. She had an old furnace that groaned and whined periodically, and my child mind had transformed the noisy contraption into a monster that was searching me out to eat me. Now, at twenty-five, I was well aware that cellars were no different than any other room in a house…but a lingering childhood fear remained with me all the same. As we approached the far wall, I was already shaking with the prospect of being locked down here.

I struggled with gently lowering my half of Teren’s body. The man simply dumped Teren’s legs to the ground. Teren cried out as I propped him against the dank stone wall of the dirt-floor room. The air smelled rank-like mold and stale water. I could hear animals scurrying in the dark corners that the single, bare bulb hanging from a chain in the center of the room didn’t illuminate.

Struggling with controlling my terror, I startled and screamed when the man touched me. He grabbed my hand, and just as I started to fight him off with every fear-empowered cell in my body, I felt cool metal slap around my wrist and cinch tight with a resounding snap. The man let go of me and confused, I followed the odd sound. I was shocked to see that my wrist was now handcuffed to a wrought iron bar attached to the stone wall.