On the advice of the officer, Roselyn went to her parents' house to sleep. Her parents, despite their threats, had yet to turn her childhood bedroom into a study or weight room or storage closet. Every inch was as she left it, some of it a mess of epic proportions but at least it was her mess. The walls were still painted the dark red color that always reminded Roselyn of coagulated blood and home.
After her parents interrogated her about what happened -- finally accepting that their daughter had no part in a felony, that she had only been there long enough to call the authorities, that her kiddy-diddling boyfriend was likely likewise innocent - they allowed her to retire to her respite for the night and wash away the events of the evening. They may have been overbearing in her formative years, but they also loved Roselyn enough to trust that she needed dreams more than realities right now.
She stripped off all her clothes and, ignoring the shower until morning, slid between the sheets of her bed and allowed her mind to drift. She couldn't quite sleep and held out little hope of changing this for a while. She just wanted a sort of hypnogogic delirium, one where she didn't have to plan for what she was going to do about her broken door or missing boyfriend or strange roommate or religious questioning or… wait a second, her mind commanded, go back one.
"Fuuuuuck!" she sighed.
In all of this excitement and panic, she had somehow forgotten to check on Shane. She was sure the thought occurred to her at some point, but with all of the questioning and fear, well, it was easy to have forgotten a few things.
Shane was tough, she could take care of herself, she tried to convince herself. She was nearly impervious, so she couldn't be in any serious trouble. It was nothing that couldn't wait until morning.
Come get her while she is still worth playing with.
"Fuuuuck!" she sighed again. She liked Shane, a lot. Whatever that meant, it wasn't anything that she could allow to happen. This would be so much easier if Shane would just carry a cell phone like a normal human being. Was that really so hard a concept?
Still, her boyfriend did. She considered the late hour briefly, then figured that the bad manners of ringing his phone this late was not nearly as bad as allowing his beloved to be kidnapped and molested. The phone rang four times, she hung up, then three more before he picked up.
"Hullo?"
"Eliot, it is Roselyn."
"Oh. Yeah. Hi."
"Hi, is Shane with you?"
"What?" The sleep left his voice. "Why should she be with me?"
"So she's not?"
"You're at the apartment?"
"No, I'm at my parents'. The apartment… someone broke in."
"And you don't know where Shane is?" Her silence was enough of an answer for him. "I'll be there in a few minutes," finished and then hung up. She wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight, she now knew, but she was resolute that her parents still would. She put on the most comfortable and darkest clothes she could find, an easier task for her than most people spending the night in their childhood bedrooms, and tiptoed into her parents' bedroom. The light snoring told her that both of them were thoroughly asleep. The loud, murmuring snoring from down the hall assured her that her brother was likewise unconscious.
She slipped out of the door, quietly locking it behind her. The grass already took on a sheen of dew in preparation for dawn. She didn't think there was anything to fear at her apartment, even with the door broken open. Red Hook was hardly a dangerous town. All throughout her adolescence, she had been about the scariest thing one could encounter in the night. If there were anything to fear, Eliot couldn't keep it away. He was a great bit of company if you needed to find a library book, but significantly less so when facing off against burglars.
She sat on her front porch, pondering Shane's fate, until the headlights from Eliot's car cut through the darkness.
"Wake up," the voice above her, smooth as hot chocolate, commanded her.
Shane opened her eyes a crack, enough to let light in but not so much that whoever was over her could detect she had awoken. She searched for context, then remembered the vampire at the door and the chloroform. Her head still floated from its effects.
"I can see the whites of your eyes. We have fairly good visual acuity," Seth informed her.
She opened her eyes to their full width, seeing no reason to pretend otherwise. She took an inventory of the room that held her. There were posters on the wall of familiar bands, teal walls meeting wood paneling and a faux wooden floor. The stinging from her wrists and ankles drove itself into her mind. She was tied to the corners of a brass, four-poster bed. She tugged, feeling the nylon cutting more deeply into her skin the more she pulled. She willed it not to heal too quickly, not to reveal anything to her captor that would be difficult to explain. She felt the blood trickle out and breathed a sigh of relief that Seth took for despair.
"I was a Scout master, briefly. You won't have much luck getting out of those knots if you want to keep your hands and feet." He wore the same outfit as before, suggesting it had only been a few hours. As far as she knew, it was still night outside this room, though she saw no stars at the windows.
"What do you want?" she asked slowly.
He laughed, something that built quietly in his chest to a great volume. Someone in the other room told him to shut up. He stood over her, so reveling in his imagined power over Shane that she could practically see his arousal. "What I want," he crooned, tracing his finger up her thigh, stopping before he reached her mid-thigh, "is not something I intend on getting quite yet. We need Dryden and we intend on using you as bait."
She quickly pondered this, realizing what they must think. She felt the terror and kept this emotion outward, quavering over her skin while she inwardly knew her advantage. "No, don't touch my beloved Dryden!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, save it, bitch. We figured out already that you aren't Roselyn while you were unconscious. We just figure that she will come for you, then he will." She sat down next to her on the bed and kissed her dully on the mouth. "And until they do, you will stay here with me, in this room. And there are a lot of things we can do together with you tied up like this. More than you can imagine, certainly more than you'll enjoy. Mmm, but I know and I will definitely enjoy." Shane squirmed and yelped, as she knew he wanted her to. She could play this game for now, as long as he was still just talking, as long as he kept his molestation over her clothes. If he wanted to commit sex crimes upon her, she would not have woken up dressed. It was not a strong certainty, but it was enough for now. He needed or wanted her conscious and uncomfortable.
"Or you could just start talking to me," he continued. "I imagine we can be very good friends and you might even survive the night if you just open those sweet thin lips of yours."
She swallowed with a gulp, whispering to draw him closer. "Wh.. what do you want to know?" She coughed as she pulled so hard that her thumb popped out of its socket and the blood lubricated enough for her right hand to slip out.
She pushed the door open with her knuckles.
"What are you doing?" Eliot asked.
"I don't want to… taint the evidence?"
Eliot pushed the door open. "The police were here. They are gone. If they thought it was necessary, they would have taken fingerprints." Eliot entered and flicked on the switch. Clothing was strewn about the floor, half finished sketches littered the walls, and a large black bird cawed loudly above them; nothing unusual.
"Did you tell them about Shane?"
Roselyn bit her lip. "I did not, actually. I wasn't thinking clearly"
Eliot shook his head in a way Roselyn did not appreciate. He took his phone from his pocket and dialed three numbers.
She grabbed it and shut it. "No, we aren't supposed to be here, the cops told me not to."
"They will just have to cope that my girlfriend is missing, okay? Someone got taken and it wasn't you. Process of elimination suggests Shane." He dialed again and began speaking to the police. "Hi, this is Eliot Kaspar. This is about the break in at 113 Main… No, I wasn't… No, I was not involved, sir. Someone was taken… No, not Roselyn, I'm with her now… I think Shane Valentine was taken. She's my girlfriend and Roselyn's roommate." He paused and glared needles at Roselyn. "No, I don't know why Ms. Jacobs didn't tell you this…. She must have just been in shock… No, I don't know who took her, that's what I want to find out… No, I wasn't there! Sir, I was not at the scene. I was at my apartment… No, I don't have an alibi… Why would I have broken in?.. No, we weren't fighting. Sir… Sir… Why is the case closed? How that the case be--" Eliot shut the phone with resign.
"What are we supposed to do, Roselyn?" he begged, his eyes now pools of desperate melting chocolate. "The cops didn't even what to talk to me and Shane is god knows where."
"We have to find out who left the message then."
Eliot was about to say how crazy this was, but caught sight of a sketch of Shane Roselyn had been doing. "Yeah, I guess so. How?"
"They thought they were getting me, right? So it is someone who must not actually know us. There isn't much resemblance between a scrawny white girl and a black goddess," she said, but the callousness took her aback for a moment. "Well, it is true. And I think it has something to do with Dryden. Like maybe someone took him or wants him to come. So we need to find him."
Roselyn kept pacing while Eliot planned his arguments. She saw Hugin dancing about on the ground and pecking at one of the many bookcases in the apartment. She knelt down and, feeling like she was talking to Lassie, asked, "What is it, Hugin?"
He dances again, pleased to have been understood. He fluttered and began pecking at a copy of Dracula. She stared at him with a cocked eyebrow. Hugin, not sure he was getting through to his mistress's dark friend, pecked at a book by Poppy Z. Brite. Roselyn whispered the word he was waiting for, "Vampires?"
He trilled and landed on the ground again. He pecked at the ground, where Shane's diary splayed on the floor. Roselyn took several deep breaths and then formulated her plan.
She returned to Eliot, who was about to speak. "Eliot, before you say anything, I want you to be totally sure that you are up for this."
"For finding Shane? Absolutely! Why wouldn't I be?"
This thought seemed to put more panic into Roselyn's eyes than existed there already. "I don't think this is really a matter for the police."
"Because they don't investigate kidnappings anymore?"
"They don't investigate ones involving…" Roselyn really didn't wish to say the word. People in black clothing should never, ever be forced to say the word because no one could begin to believe them. But it was what it was. "Involving vampires."
He laughed once and wished she would join it. "Vampires? Like Goths?"
"No. No, I think actually bloodsucking vampires. With long canines and coffins."
There was no difficulty in seeing the disbelief she had expected. He thought this was some game, that Roselyn was playing out some fantasy.
"Eliot, I really do mean it."
He paused, taking this in. "I believe you, actually. I don't know why, but I think you believe what you are saying is true. So what do we do?"
The options were not appealing. The two of them would be a quick quarry for any vampires if they were even a minute bit stronger than the average person. Even faced with more than a few average people, Roselyn and Eliot didn't stand much of a chance. "We should find Dryden."
"Why? What can he do?"
"Well--" this was going to suck, but the thought seemed more likely with every passing second "-he's one of them now. And I think the door was there way of getting him back."
Red Hook is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is published by Cave Drawing Ink and syndicated throughout the internet.
