Her father might not have been able to get into Jacob’s head with the magic that cloaked and protected him, but when he discovered Elise’s remains he would have known something was wrong and would have gotten the information out of him the old-fashioned way. Then he would have carved Jacob up like the game the others hunted.
It was a nice fantasy, but she needed to focus. She was already getting sleepy. It didn’t even take the sun coming up to wear her out. Even normal vampires couldn’t get up when the sun was in the sky, but that went double for Syndey.
They were in Oregon now. She’d seen signs on the road they’d driven on. The Hub City was in Nevada. Sydney wasn’t sure if he was taking her the whole way or if they’d meet someone else who would take her. If she planned to kill him, this might be her only opportunity.
They’d passed a place called “Bend” about an hour ago. It was deserted like most other places. Or else those who lived there were in hiding, hoping the cities had lost interest in them.
Jacob pulled off the road when he spotted a farmhouse. Sydney contemplated running, but he’d catch her, and she knew he’d picked an area like this intentionally. It was so much wide open space, hundreds of acres. The only safe place for her when the sun came up would be inside that farmhouse somewhere. Or maybe the nearby barn.
“Let’s go inside and find you a safe space.”
Such an odd thing for him to say right now, but he would want her safe for the trade. If she died, she was no good to him and he couldn’t get back to his precious family. It made Sydney feel even more guilty for trying to escape hers.
She wondered if someone had delivered the truck and left it for him for the drive. She wondered what other things he’d been planning. He probably had non-perishable food already packed away in the back of the truck, shipped to him by humans. Figuring out what he’d eat likely just meant deciding on a canned meat and vegetable, not hunting something as she’d previously imagined.
As she followed him into the house, she envisioned jumping on his back and sinking her fangs into his throat, draining him so fast he couldn’t react, but she knew he’d toss her right off him. And then she’d be screwed.
No, she had to wait until he offered her his vein and distract him so she could drink more than she should. It had been so long since she’d drank too much from him—so long since it had been a real threat. In the decade since Elise had claimed him, he’d probably forgotten how weak he could get from blood loss and how fast.
Jacob opened cabinets in the kitchen, and a white mouse scurried by squeaking in irritation. A few cans of food in the pantry had exploded after years and years of sitting expired in a house with no temperature control.
“No one has been here since the original owners. And from the looks of it, they haven’t been here in a long time, either.”
His boots creaked over the rotting hardwood as he went down the hallway. Sydney silently prayed the floor would collapse and he’d break his neck falling into a basement, but it didn’t happen. He reached the end safely.
She stood in the hall, not liking close proximity with this Jacob. His head popped out again a few minutes later. “Bedroom in here, Syd. There’s a big, empty closet you can sleep in. I just have to cover this hole in the wood so the sun doesn’t get you.”
There was a large picture window directly across from the closet door that looked like it probably got some direct sunlight. As resting places went, this was far less secure than she’d like, but she had to be breathing for this trade to happen. Barring a freak raid on the place, she knew she’d make it at least until night in the closet.
He went back down the hall, leaving her in the bedroom. She heard doors opening and closing and banging around in drawers until he returned with shiny silver tape. He got a look of longing in his eyes.
“My dad used to have this. It’s duct tape. You can fix anything with it.” He covered the hole in the wood, then sat on the edge of the bed and tossed the tape on the floor.
Sydney pushed back the revulsion that went through her as he rolled back his sleeve. And then she thought, Great, he won’t let me near his neck. It would be harder to kill him this way.
She sat beside him and sank her fangs into the offered arm. Her hand inched up the inside of his leg, but then Jacob’s hand was on top of hers, stilling her.
“As good as you can make me feel, Syd, I know you’re just trying to sway me. It can’t be done. I’m going back to my family, and you’ll never see yours again. I’m sorry this is the way it had to go down. I’m sorry you come from a family of monsters and must suffer for their crimes.”
She cringed as his hand stroked through her hair. But then, he started telling the most insipid stories about his childhood before the vampire king had him brought to the compound to be on Sydney’s dinner menu. He wasn’t paying close attention to her feeding or how much time had elapsed.
If he just kept talking… After a few minutes, his words began to slur and slow as he stumbled and tripped over sentences. This could work! She could taste freedom. A moment later, she felt a sharp zap of electricity, and then she blacked out.
Sydney woke, feeling weaker than normal, even though she’d fed a lot. She struggled out of the closet she’d been carelessly tossed into to find an angry Jacob sitting on the edge of the bed, a black rectangular box in his hand.
He looked down at it, then back at her. “Just some protection that was sent to me with the truck and provisions.”
Provisions. Yes, there was food in the back of the truck. Far from roughing it, they’d provided her captor with everything he needed to comfortably transport the vampire cargo. Her attention went back to the weapon on his lap.
“I didn’t want to have to use it. You knew you were taking too much. Shame on you, Syd.”
“Shame on me?” She was only trying to survive. She wasn’t the one he had a conflict with. It wasn’t like she’d picked him out of a catalog, or like she’d known how her father had secured her meals. She’d been too young to think through the ramifications of any of that.
She felt gross from sleeping in the closet, and she wondered how many of those field mice had crawled over her in her sleep. She wondered if Jacob had done anything inappropriate while she’d been unconscious. And then she started to cry, because what was the point anymore of pretending to be brave?
A hint of guilt shone from his eyes, but he just said, “We need to get back on the road.”
He dragged her to the truck and made sure she was buckled in. This time he didn’t hide the fact that he had plenty of food for the trip. He took a dried meat product in a plastic wrapper and a canned beverage from the back and got into the truck.
Sydney was hungry, but she knew he wouldn’t let her feed again until they stopped. And she also knew the black box would be poised and ready in case she tried anything else stupid.
3
Noah sat in a corner of the glass cell. An hour maybe until exercise time. The moon was getting closer. Tonight more than any other time before, he felt amped up, like he couldn’t run enough. He’d already been tempted on his laps around the yard to shift, but if he did it before the full moon it would look suspicious.