He got out of the car and slammed the car door in frustration while he stared a hole in the back of Bridgette’s head. However, I knew in a few minutes he would brush this off like one would brush off the taunts of an annoying sibling.
“He sure is fun to scare,” exclaimed Bridgette as she and Lea walked ahead of us toward the front door of the bar.
I came up beside him and gently grasped his hand. He instantly relaxed with a little smile lighting up his face. I was reminded of the night before when we’d been alone and blissfully happy in bed together.
We entered the bar, which looked like any other bar we had seen that night. There were neon signs of electric light advertising different beers. Several people wore button-down shirts cut off at the sleeves despite the time of year. Just like everywhere else, our presence was instantly noticed and pegged as foreign. I tried to blend in as Grant ordered us a local’s drink that might win us some acceptance with the crowd. You’d be surprised how often it actually worked. For some reason, if a local saw you drinking their favorite beer, they warmed up to you quicker.
I took the bottle of whatever Grant had ordered me and pretended to sip the vile-smelling liquid inside. The others were not here yet. Maybe they had made progress after we had left the last bar. Lea had a few fences to mend in that bar if we were ever going to be welcomed back there again, not that we wanted an encore of tonight by any means. A man had gotten a little too overzealous with his hands while he’d tried to offer to buy Lea a drink, and she had broken his jaw in retaliation. The four of us had had to leave quickly before the cops could be called.
We split up and began mingling around the smoky bar. I spotted a Hispanic man sitting at a small table alone in the corner with beat-up cowboy boots on his feet. I went over to him demurely and sat in the empty chair across from him.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked sweetly.
“My cousin George is sitting there, but you can sit there for now until he gets back,” he responded in perfect English and without looking up at me.
“How are you tonight?”
“Fine,” he said, still not meeting my eyes.
“Don’t talk much, do you?”
“Not really. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. I was just hoping to meet someone who could tell me about Emathia Prison. I have to go there tomorrow to visit my uncle and wondered what kind of place it was.”
The man’s head shot straight up at the mention of the prison, and he looked into my eyes for the first time. Once he got a good look at them, he jumped backward, stumbling out of his chair screaming. The entire bar seemed to silence in order to turn to stare at him and then at me because he was pointing an accusatory finger at me.
“No! Not you! They let me go! They said I was okay now if I don’t talk!”
“Calm down, sir,” I said gently to him as I rose to my feet. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll go if you want me to.”
He was terrified. The poor man stared at me like I had just attacked him. Just then, Grant came running up to my side and put his arm around me. Lea and Bridgette had quietly moved towards the door as to not draw any more attention to us.
“You! That’s it! You’ve come here for that boy! The one with your creepy eyes. He’s there! They all are! Go get him yourself and leave me alone!”
“Excuse me?” I asked, confused.
I looked at Grant, but he just shrugged.
Suddenly, another short Hispanic man wearing a cowboy hat busted through the wooden doors that led to the restrooms and promptly ran over to the shrieking man in front of us. He wrapped his arms around the man and began shushing him gently.
“There, there, Oscar. Everything is fine. Damn, I’m gone five minutes to take a piss and come back to find you wailing. Get a hold of yourself.”
He looked over to us and saw the confusion on our faces.
“Sorry about this, folks. My cousin Oscar just hasn’t been right since the prison released him six months ago. He has his bad days and good days, but you just never know what is going to set him off.”
We nodded understandingly. “I apologize for upsetting him. We’ll be going now.”
We exited the bar as quickly as we could, and once we were outside and out of earshot, I addressed the other three. “He recognized my eyes. He’s seen eyes like this before in that prison. I don’t know what all that
son
stuff was about, but I think we can be pretty sure there are vampires in that prison.”
Chapter Thirty
Grant
Anna was paranoid, and I really hated when she acted paranoid. She had gone to great lengths to deter me from wanting to go into the prison with the raiding vampires, and when I’d persisted, she finally had to deny me outright with a hint of black rimming her beautiful blue irises. I was testing her patience, but I didn’t care. It seemed I could do this to her unlike anyone else.
Finally, it came to the sad fact that I would just slow them down. This time would not be like the last prison raid I had orchestrated. While my plan had worked perfectly in Texas, Anna said if this was indeed a trap, risking a visitor entrance like that would be too dangerous. They would likely know what we looked like from the security cameras, and if the two people were recognized and caught trying to visit a prisoner, they would be vulnerable and the rest of the group would be trapped outside. Besides, if the guards recognized Anna’s eyes like the former prisoner in the bar had, they would be instantly discovered.
The vampires had chosen to raid the prison their own way, which meant surrounding the prison, scaling the tall walls and taking out guard after guard silently as they made their way inside. My body, being a lowly human body and sadly incapable of all of these actions, was completely inadequate for keeping up with them. I knew Anna was right when she said I would only slow them down.
I hung my head and accepted the fact I would be waiting in the rented van with Lulu acting as my personal bodyguard and babysitter. Even though Lulu had made no facial expression when Anna announced this to the group, I was sure she must be disappointed to not get to join in the fight. She smiled that quirky smile of hers to assure me she didn’t mind being my pixie of a watch dog, but I was getting to know these creatures better than they thought.
Aggression seemed to be such a natural state for vampires, and since they spent so much of their time trying to act like passive humans, the thrill of a good fight seemed to invigorate them. Most expressions and emotions sort of passed them by, and they reacted to situations and people with the steely cold expression of a stoic sculpture. But aggression? That one seemed to light them up from the inside like someone striking a match to a candle in a jack o’ lantern. It was as if they were born for that, and I supposed that was what the scientists had intended. They just hadn’t expected any of them to grow a conscious.
Well, all of them seemed to light up except Anna, who seemed burdened by her own viciousness. Sure, she was a ruthless fighter and fit into her violent nature as easily as the others, but it hung heavy on her and weighed her down with the dampening shame of what she was.
The others, even the good ones like Marshall, reveled in their violence when they got to use it guilt free, and only afterward did they feel regretful for any damage they had inflicted. Control seemed to be the name of the game for their aggression, and the older they were, the more they learned to control their impulses. However, when the opportunity of a good and righteous fight presented itself, they reverted to their animalistic side all too willingly. Lulu was no exception to the rule, and I saw a loophole in Anna’s careful plan to keep me out of danger. When I stopped pestering her about going in the prison, any suspicion about my sudden acquiescence was masked by her tangible relief.
Lulu and I positioned the van off the main road and behind a thin tree line where there had been ample gravel to make an even off-road parking spot. We waited until nightfall before the rest of the vampires exited the van and began their quick procession around the prison, using the tree line as cover.
At the north end of the prison stood two guard towers that flanked a large gated entrance. This was the main entrance to the prison that was traditionally used as the public entrance, the guards’ entrance and the place used for the loading and unloading of prisoners. The south end of the prison had two identical guard towers flanking a smaller and less-used gated entrance. This was used for deliveries and held a large docking bay for unloading food, drinks, mail and other such things. The east and west walls of the prison each had one smaller guard tower built into the wall, and it enabled the guards to watch not only the outside of the prison, but inside the inner wall as well.
Anna kissed me quickly through the open van window with no time for a drawn-out goodbye before she turned and raced off to her post. She moved so fast she seemed to be only a blur of color as I watched her race through the trees. I knew she was moving to her post in the tree line that faced the east wall. The plan was that Cat and Gabriel would attack the two towers on the south gate, Bridgette and Jackson would attack the towers on the north gate, Lea would attack the singular tower on the west wall, and Anna would attack the tower on the east wall. Marshall, being one of the most versatile fighters and the fastest runner, would make rounds around the tree line in case anyone got into trouble and needed help.
Once the north-gate team got past their guards, he would rendezvous with them to create an escape opening in the entrance gate. All of this had to be accomplished as quickly and quietly as possible to avoid someone getting a chance to sound the alarm. Once that happened, their stealthy cover would be blown. If the guards chose to release the prisoners in an attempt to distract and entice the vampires to feed like they had when the vampires had initially escaped, chaos would ensue and the mission would become a lot more difficult. Therefore, stealth and silence were paramount.
I watched from the van as two dark figures simultaneously raced across the clearing in a blur and began to scale the tower’s walls like silent lizards. The silhouettes of the guards seemed unfazed by any of this, and I saw a sudden and tiny glow as one of them lit a cigarette in the darkness of the tower. I held my breath as I spotted the lizard-like figures crawl up the remainder of the walls and leap into the windows of the guard towers only to disappear.
Lulu and I spectated with wide-eyed anticipation as the silhouettes of the guards became muffled and mixed with the silhouettes of the two vampires. Within seconds, only the two vampire forms remained standing, and I breathed out a sigh of relief when I didn’t hear the screech of an alarm. We knew the other four were probably already to their posts, I had seen a blur of Anna as she raced to her wall, and we listened intently for the alarm to sound. No noise broke the eerie silence of the evening, and when I saw Marshall standing warily at the edge of the tree line waiting for Bridgette and Jackson to appear at the gate, I knew it was time to put my plan into action.
“Lulu?”
“Yes, Grant,” she whispered while never taking her large eyes off her Marshall on the other side of the clearing.
“Aren’t you the least bit upset that Anna chose you to watch me? I mean, you could be in there with the others right now.”
“No, not really,” she stated with little inflection in her voice.
She still had her gaze fixed on Marshall, who now dashed across the clearing after spotting the two vampires on the other side of the gate. He was a dark blur in the distance, and she smiled slightly while she watched him. “I think it says a lot about me that Anna would entrust your safety to me.”
“That’s true,” I said thoughtfully.
This was not the response I had expected, but Lulu always was a little different from the others. She seemed a little nuts at times and a little childlike at others. I would have to change my plan and play the Marshall card.
“I just feel bad making you stay out here with me needlessly while Marshall and everyone else is in there. Aren’t you worried about him?”
I knew she was and using this was devious of me. I would just have to hate myself for it later.
“Marshall can take care of himself,” she said plainly with no note of anger in her voice.
It was just a simple fact, but I noticed how she watched him longingly with the other two vampires as they ripped and pried a large hole in the metal mesh of the north gate. Within seconds of making the hole, Marshall ducked through it, and they were out of sight. Lulu flinched only slightly, which was quite a reaction for a vampire. Her flinch mimicked a quick inclination to reach out to Marshall the moment he ceased to be visible. I noticed the tiny movement and the longing in her face as she looked at the place he had been only seconds before, and I hated myself for what I was about to say.
“You could go after him,” I whispered.
For the first time since the others had left us alone, Lulu turned to look at me. She gave me that cocked-head look vampires did that always reminded me of a puppy examining something of interest.
“Anna told me to stay with you.”
“Yes, but the others have already managed to get inside. No alarms have sounded. The prison is under attack. I seriously doubt anyone will come after a single human in a van in the middle of nowhere. They will be too wrapped up with the vampires to care about me. I feel terrible you can’t be with your Marshall and your family right now. If he got hurt and you weren’t there to stop it, I would feel responsible. Go, Lulu. I’ll be fine here.”