Sharkbait Down Under

Vicki Lawrence’s POV

It didn’t take long to confirm that they were after our blood. We got our first meal delivered by a young vampire female; chicken enchiladas, refried beans, and rice. It tasted great, and I was famished. “Aren’t you worried they drugged the food,” Noelani asked as she looked at her plate while I vacuumed my food down.

“They have other ways of getting our compliance,” I said. There were several gallons of drinking water and some Solo cups, and I took a long drink. “This is a good sign I was right. They don’t want to harm us because they need us strong to provide blood. It doesn’t make sense to harm the merchandise.”

“So we’re like dairy cows now,” Amy muttered.

“Pretty much. Kept in the barn, fed, and milked often.” The others dug in; we hadn’t eaten in almost a day, so we were all hungry.

When the woman returned for the trays, I was shocked that they left two gallons of drinking water and the cups for us. I pointed at the water, and she shook her head, no. “Beber el agua,” she said as she walked past the guards.

“Drink the water,” I translated for the girls, as Amy, the twins, and I had taken several years of Spanish in high school. Fiona had taken German, while Carla had taken French. “We’re probably dehydrated, so it’s a good idea.”

I filled my cup again as I listened to the guards head back upstairs. Escape wasn’t in the cards; I couldn’t even grab the bars of the cell door with the silver without using my clothes as gloves. Even if we left the cell, we wouldn’t get past the gate at the bottom of the stairs and a heavy door at the top. Add in cameras and an unknown number of guards, and we had no chance.

The guards came back an hour later with their cattle prods. This time they brought a nurse with them. “We are going to take blood from each of you,” the lead guard said. “You don’t want to resist.” He pressed a button on the prod, making electricity dance across the probes. “You’ll be in agony after we shock you. Then we’ll tie you down and take your blood anyway.”

“We will cooperate,” I said. The guard had us each lay in our beds; moving quickly, the nurse went from one person to the next, cleaning our arm and inserting a needle to fill the waiting blood bags. She took two pints from each of us, twice the usual donation amount. I was a little woozy when she finished up and removed the needle.

“Necesitan beber mucho jugo y descansar (They need to drink lots of juice and rest),” she told the guards.

“Toda lo que tenemos es agua (All we have is water),” I replied.

The guard nodded at her as she packed up her bag, the blood bags labeled with our names, and carefully packed into a case. “Me haré cargo de ello (I’ll take care of it),” he replied. He sent one of the guards upstairs with the nurse. “Don’t sit up too fast. You’re bound to be lightheaded.”

He was right. I was in the middle bunk on the right; I turned on my side and slowly moved until I was sitting on the edge of my bed. “What is your name,” I asked him.

“Guard,” he replied. The first guard came back down, carrying a plastic gallon of orange juice and another bottle of grape juice, and set them on the table with some snack bags. The guard took a small remote out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Enjoy a movie or something as you recover.” With that, the guards walked out and left us alone again.

I hit power on the remote, and a large television came on in the hallway outside the bars. The first channel was in Spanish, but I opened up a guide and found Fox News in English. “They must be confident we aren’t going anywhere,” I said. “They don’t even care if we know what’s going on.”

I slowly stood, helping the girls up before moving to the table where we could sit and recover. I downed a glass of orange juice, then refilled it as I munched on some pretzels and watched the news. Compared to my last kidnapping, this was Disneyland.

It wasn’t long before a news story came on about our disappearance. I saw my parents standing with Luna Adrienne and the Steeles at a press conference. The Mexican police were ‘working tirelessly to find the men responsible.’ Luna Adrienne came to the microphone, and in fluent Spanish, offered a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to our recovery. I whistled at that. Five million dollars was a LOT of money, even for a vampire. Fox showed highlights of the press conference with subtitles, but it was clear they didn’t have any leads. Hell, we weren’t within a thousand miles of Adrienne right now. Hidden deep underground as we were, satellites would never see us, and no one was going to stumble upon the hideout. Vampires were smarter than that.

None of us had any energy, and soon we were getting ready for bed. The vampire who cleaned up after our dinner also had dropped off clean clothes and toiletries. I knew the guards were watching, but there was no privacy we could expect here. I stripped down and tossed the dirty clothes into a hamper on the other side of the bars. I quickly showered and changed into clean underwear, a T-shirt, and thin pajama pants before I got into bed. The other girls did the same. “Should I leave the television on,” I asked.

“Yes,” Fiona said from the bunk above me. “Just leave the volume down.”

I got up three times with Fiona as she woke with nightmares about her rape. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to go through that. Fiona spent her life in law enforcement, then as a warrior and my protector. She was the strongest woman I knew, yet it wasn’t enough. Fiona was still moving slowly, her body bruised and battered, and the welts from the belts they used still fresh. She was more than twice my age, and she didn’t need my assurances or advice. Fiona couldn't even get revenge, as the men who raped her were all dead at the vampire's hands.

I just held her hand until she could fall asleep again, then I tried to sleep myself.

The lights coming on woke me up; Fox News was still playing in the background, and it was six in the morning. I sat up, and my stomach rolled. I jumped up and ran to the toilet, getting the lid up just before I started throwing up last night’s dinner. I was still coughing up stuff when Amy pulled my hair off my face and started rubbing my back. “Are you all right?”

I’d stopped heaving, and I moved back onto my heels. Carla handed me a cup of water; I washed my mouth out and spat into the toilet, flushing it away. “I’m fine,” I said as they helped me up. “I probably overate last night.”

“None of us are throwing up, and I've seen you eat far more than that recently,” Amy said. “Come on.” She stayed with me as I brushed my teeth. “Any other problems? Are these tender?” She poked at my breast, and I turned and glared at her with the toothbrush still in my mouth. “When was your last period?”

I rinsed my mouth out and thought about it. “Just before we left for Hawaii,” I said.

“That was eight weeks ago, Vicki!” Oh, shit. “Tell me you and Nicholas used protection.”

“Of course, we did!” I thought back to those times that things got a little out of hand. “Mostly?”

Carla pointed to the table. “Go sit down.” When I did, she leaned over and took a deep sniff of my crotch. She grimaced when she stood back up.

“Pregnant?”

“Yes. Four or five weeks along, I’d say. Your mate probably knocked you up when he took your neck.”

“Of course he did,” I said as I rolled my eyes. I’d hit the Luna Trifecta. I met my destined, mated him, and ended up pregnant the same day.

In the werewolf world, my pregnancy would be a cause for celebration. Sure, it was unplanned, but the Pack would have its heir, and the child would carry the mantle. Having an heir meant the Pack had a future, and stability would help our new Pack grow. I just had to shake my head. When I’d gone to the scratch ’n sniff after my birthday, I’d been afraid my mate would make me quit school and work to raise babies. Less than a year later? I’d dropped out of school, gotten pregnant, and was quitting my modeling job. I wanted to find Nicholas and tell him; I wanted him to pick me up, spin me around, and tell me how happy he was.

That wasn’t happening. In an underground prison, it wasn’t good news at all. Who knows what the Vampires would do when they found out? Would they kill it? Allow me to bring it to term, then sell the mantled child? Or would they keep the child to live its entire life as a blood slave to the Vampire Master?

The panic attack began as I imagined them hurting my baby, and I began to hyperventilate. “Relax, Vicki. Do the breathing exercise we do for free-diving,” Amy said.

I tried, but it didn’t work. My hands went to my waist as I imagined a vampire draining my child of its blood. Spots formed in front of my eyes, and I lost focus on their faces. Their voices seemed muffled like I was underwater, and then it all went black.