Sharkbait Down Under

Sharkbait (Vicki Lawrence’s) POV

My baby was gone.

I wiped the tear from my face as I laid on the bunk, recovering from the cramp a few minutes earlier. It was the worst period of my life; the flow was heavy, and the cramping worse. I’d already soaked through two maxi-pads, and I would need more. The smell of blood was strong in the cell; the only good part was that the vampires spent little time down here now. They were watching on the surveillance system and listening in to our conversations. We couldn’t use a link with the silver collars on, so we had to whisper and take advantage of our hearing.

We’d kept the news on, and that hadn’t helped at all. Our story didn’t appear much anymore, as nothing had changed, and law enforcement found no leads. One of the commentators on Fox speculated about our fate. “It’s been almost a week since the girls disappeared, and their parents have not received a single ransom demand. Given the younger girls’ fame and beauty, I believe they were victims of an international sex slavery ring.”

“Is that common,” the interviewer asked.

“More common than we would like to think,” he said. “There are a lot of sick people in this world. For some, owning a famous and beautiful woman is a status symbol. Having the power to do anything you want to her, knowing what she was, is worth a lot of money. Strung out on drugs, abused repeatedly, and without hope? These girls are unlikely to make their twenty-first birthdays.”

“That’s a depressing outlook,” the host said.

“The people who kidnap, sell, and hold these women make sure they never see the light of day. Eventually, they are too far gone to keep, so they are killed and buried.”

“Turn that off,” I said to anyone listening.

“Where are these people….”

The news show was no longer on; Amy was flipping through the channels. “It’s Christmas Eve. There must be something else on,” she said. Changing it to Discovery Channel, she found “Air Jaws 10” showing. “Perfect,” she said as she came over to sit on the edge of my bunk. “Remember those times we’d stay up all night waiting for Santa Jaws to show up?”

I laughed; our Pack had a few traditions that were a little different than others. The entire Pack would gather at Leo’s house on Christmas Eve and stay for three days of fun and eating. Santa Jaws was Leo’s creation; the costumed shark with a red hat preferred donuts and coffee to milk and cookies, and keeping him full was important. If he was hungry, he might come downstairs and steal the treats laid out on tables for Christmas day! To prevent this, all the Pack children would sleep in the rec room in a big group.

Amy and I always picked a spot near the stairs, under the table of popcorn balls and chocolate candies. That way, we could reach up and grab candy from the table without getting out of our sleeping bags or waking the others. The two of us were tactical thinkers, even back then.

“I remember the year you pretended to sleep until Santa Jaws passed, then grabbed the candy-stuffed remora off his back,” I said with a laugh. Leo had found the two-foot-long rubber toy at one of the aquariums we visited. It was hollow and stretchy, with a suction-cup mouth that had a pinky-sized hole in it. Our first Christmas in the Pack, he’d taken hours shoving hard candies into its sucker mouth until it was full, and then he hung it from his costume. The first year, I was the one who got it from him. I tied it by its tail to my headboard, and every day I’d spend a minute milking a butterscotch or peppermint candy back out its mouth for school.

“That was epic,” she said with a smile. We woke up to Amy screaming as she hung upside down, beating Santa Jaws about his legs with the rubber remora as the costumed figure walked back to the stairs. It took all twenty of us piling on to get him to let go. “I was eating candy until March!”

We watched shark shows through dinner. The Discovery Channel was doing everything it could to help find us. They were running a crawl periodically with the tip line number. Every hour they ran a 30-second spot with our last photographs and the reward information. Finally, they were running my previous shows daily and teasing our new series relentlessly. Our disappearance was good for ratings, even if some people thought it was all a publicity stunt.

Adrienne had blown up at a reporter who suggested that yesterday. “Two innocent people DIED during this kidnapping. What kind of sick person are you to believe anyone would do this for publicity?” Adrienne could fillet and skin a bitch in seconds, and that reporter changed her tune. I thought back to Juan, our friendly SCUBA guide, who they shot before our eyes. I remembered seeing Santiago’s body along the trail, the owner of the land we were diving on. By Luna, diving and filming our reality show seemed so long ago.

We were watching “Air Jaws 12” when the door upstairs opened. I heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairway before the gate opened, and they walked to the outside of our cell. “Have you eaten recently,” the guard asked the nurse. “The blood smell is pervasive, and I can’t have a youngling losing control.”

“I’ll be fine; I work around the smell of blood all day,” the nurse replied. “I’ll wave when I’m ready to go.”

“I’ll be watching,” he said as he locked her inside the cell with us.

Amy got up, moving to sit at the table with the other girls. They wouldn’t do anything that would stop me from getting treatment, and they knew the drill. The nurse set her medical bag down on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Crampy, but the nausea is gone, and I’m eating,” I said. “I’ve soaked through two maxi-pads.”

She was checking my temperature with an infrared thermometer while she talked. It beeped, and she put it back in her bag. “You’re not running a fever, which is excellent. I told you to expect the heavy bleeding last time, and I’ll leave you more pads. It’s going to be heavier than other periods because your body thought it was pregnant, even though the baby never made it to your uterus. Any sharp pains?”

“A few. Not like before.”

“Let me see.” The nurse lifted her bag and pulled the blanket down to my feet. She removed and unfolded a surgical pad, spreading it on the bed and sliding it under my butt. I felt something cold and metallic on my leg as she tucked it in. “Don’t react to it or show it,” she whispered. “Help is coming soon. If vampires come for you, fight back. Don’t let them move you, or your family will never find you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s not right.”

She pulled out a small device with a long, narrow probe. “This is a portable ultrasound unit with an internal probe. I’m going to use this to verify the ectopic pregnancy is clearing out on its own, all right?”

Like I could refuse anything down here. “OK.”

She used a lubricant on the probe, then inserted it into my vagina and started to move it around. The screen on the device showed all kinds of stuff I didn’t understand, and she pressed a button to freeze the screen. “It’s good news,” she said. She pointed at a dot. “This was the original ectopic site. It looks to be breaking up, with smaller cell groupings here and here,” she said as she pointed at other spots. “Flushing the lines clear may take a while, but this means the drug worked. You may get the occasional sharp pain as the clumps of cells move down the tube, like passing a kidney stone. I don’t see any permanent damage.”

“I can still have children?”

“Only one of your ovaries was affected, so that was never an issue. Once the cellular clumps are clear, the travel of eggs on your left side can resume. There is a potential complication; scarring of the tubes can make future ectopic pregnancies more likely. That risk is minimal since we caught it in time, and you are young and healthy.”

I was letting out tears of joy and sorrow at the same time. It was proof my baby was gone, but the hope of another pup in the future when we got out of here. I had to keep faith in my family and Pack that they would get us out of here; I knew they would stop at nothing to get us back. I had to be the Alpha the girls needed and keep it together until help arrived. “Thank you.”

The nurse put the ultrasound unit away and took a blood sample. She finished her examination and cleaned me up before placing a new pad in place. “You’re doing fine,” she continued with her usual speaking voice. “Keep to the bedrest for another two days, and notify the guards if you get frequent sharp pains or excessive bleeding. Make sure you eat and drink frequently.” She left a couple more maxi-pads on the bed. “I’ll check on you tomorrow night.”

“Thank you.” I laid back down as she waited for the jailer to let her out; I didn’t move until after they were upstairs. Moving a hand down under the sheet, I felt for the object the vampire had left me. I slowly pulled the knife up along my right side, feeling the wooden handle and the long blade. It felt like a chef’s knife from a kitchen, maybe ten inches long. I moved it until it was near my shoulder, just under the covers. “Fiona, can you come here a minute?”

“Sure, Alpha.” The other girls went back to watching television, while Fiona came over and knelt by me. “Did everything go all right on your checkup?”

“Hug me and reach your hand under the sheet by my chest. Take it and hide it, and make sure the cameras don’t see it,” I whispered to my bodyguard. She leaned forward and embraced me while her arm slid under the covers. She stilled momentarily but recovered. I felt her holding the knife, and when she leaned back, she was hiding it under her left arm. “Help me up? I need to use the bathroom.”

“Sure,” she replied. I pulled my covers off, then Fiona wrapped her left arm behind me and pulled me up. I gave her a moment to stash the knife under her pillow, then walked over to use the bathroom. When I got back, I pretended to cry, and Fiona crawled into the narrow cot with me. She held my face to her shoulder while I whispered what had happened. “Get your rest, Vicki,” she said as she got out and tucked me in.

I should try and sleep, but the news had me too wound up. Someone was working against my captors, and my family was on the way. Fiona spread the word to one person at a time, making sure it didn’t look suspicious.

“They’re replaying your Woods Hole documentary at seven, Vicki,” Amy said.

“Great,” I said. “What’s next? THESE TITS got me kidnapped and stuck in a Mexican vampire prison?” Even the twins had to laugh at that. “Let’s watch it. At least the sharks are cool.”

Carla made sure we all had drinks and snacks, and we all settled down to wait for the show to start. The opening had just started when I heard multiple explosions mixed with gunfire. “Get down,” I said as the building shook above us. Dust and dirt shook loose from the hewn-rock ceiling, and I rolled back against the wall. The twins ducked under the table while Fiona, Amy, and Carla ran for the beds.