Bound to You

Four days passed with no major problems in the mansion, though the tension was quite obviously there. Eliza still wasn’t speaking to Zack, which was causing him to be quite short-tempered and irate with everyone. Leigh still refused to calm down and screamed at Johnny at the top of her lungs every time he even set foot in the bedroom, which was every night since he refused to give up his bedroom. Between the two of them, Eliza and Leigh had everyone in the house completely stressed out.

“Hey, Short Shit, c’mere.” Jimmy said from one of the basement rooms at around two o’clock in the afternoon. Johnny sighed, knowing what Jimmy wanted to talk about, and pushed a hand through his blonde hair as he walked over to his friend.

“Yeah?”

“Look, this shit with Leigh has to stop, dude.” Jimmy said in a low voice before looking up the stairs. “I know what it’s like; Lea was like that when she first got here too. And you defended us, remember?”

“I do remember that.” Johnny nodded, recalling what Jimmy was talking about. Five years prior, Jimmy had brought Leana, his wife, back to the mansion. She had been much like Leigh was now, screaming and breaking things left and right until Matt had finally had enough and threatened to kill her right then and there himself if she didn’t shut up. Johnny had stepped between Matt and Jimmy, who’d been ready to fight one another, and had helped the three of them reach a compromise.

“I want to help you and Leigh, I really do.” Jimmy sighed, again checking the stairwell. He knew Matt wouldn’t appreciate him talking with Johnny about it, but he felt his friend deserved a heads up. “Matt’s getting to the point where he’s going to snap, Johnny. Not just with Leigh; he’s pissed at Eliza too. But he’s willing to tolerate her because Zack tolerated Val when she first got here.”

“He wants to kill Leigh?” Johnny asked in a quieter voice. Jimmy nodded, his blue eyes one-hundred percent serious.

“Yeah. He was talking about it last night, Johnny. You need to do something to at least calm her down a little bit.”

“Nothing I do works!” Johnny hissed, throwing his hands in the air. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t even walk in the goddamn room without her throwing shit at me! She refuses to talk, and I don’t think she’s been eating, either.”

Jimmy sighed again, knowing his friend was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. “Maybe if I have Lea talk to her she’ll calm down, yeah?”

“I don’t know.” Johnny sighed. “Val even tried to reason with her, and she punched her! I’m surprised Matt hasn’t found out.”

“I didn’t say anything to him.” Val’s voice said quietly from one of the corners of the basement room, stepping out and walking over to them. “She doesn’t deserve what Matt would do if he found out.”

“Do you think there’s any getting through to her?” Johnny asked Val.

Val sighed, pushing a hand through her blonde hair. “Honestly? I’m not sure, Johnny. She’s been pushed past her breaking point here. She doesn’t know who to trust, if anyone, and she’s sure she’s going to die.”

“I know.” Johnny murmured, furrowing his brows together. In the brief moments when he could peer into her mind—usually when she was sleeping, while her guard wasn’t up—her thoughts made him feel guiltier than he already did. She felt as though she’d been deceived, and that he was eventually going to kill her. She wouldn’t even listen to his explanations anymore, and had long since stopped moving around the room. Now, she was a permanent fixture in the corner of the room she’d huddled up in, covered by a blanket he’d tossed on her a few nights ago when she’d passed out from exhaustion.

“I’ll have Lea talk to her.” Jimmy said. “But…I don’t know if anyone can get to her if Lea can’t.”

Val nodded, looking at Johnny. “I’ll try to keep Matt as distracted from her as I can, Johnny, but it’s not going to be easy and it probably won’t work for long. He’s at the end of his rope when it comes to her.”

Johnny nodded and knew that he had to at least have Leigh capable of being quietly angry at him within a few days at best, or she wouldn’t be given any more chances or leniency.

“I’ll tell Lea to go up there and try to talk to her now.” Jimmy said to Johnny, patting his shoulder in a friendly manner before walking up the stairs, Val right behind him.

-x-

Leigh was huddled against the wall with her knees pulled tightly to her chest, a blanket wrapped around her body, when she heard the bedroom door open and close quietly. She immediately opened her mouth to scream, assuming it was Johnny, but blinked in surprise when she saw a girl who looked to be only a few years older than herself walking towards her, a photo book in one hand and a bottle of water in the crook of her elbow.

“Who are you?” Leigh snapped, her voice still loud even though she hadn’t screamed yet. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m Leana.” Lea gave her a friendly smile as she crouched next to Leigh. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to leave you alone; for your own good, rather than mine.”

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to scream again.” Leigh told her, narrowing her eyes. The threat worked with Johnny sometimes, and it had worked on the petite blonde girl who’d come in a day or so ago. Instead of leaving like Leigh had thought she would, the brunette girl just smiled again and sat against the wall next to Leigh, offering her the water bottle.

“I’m still not leaving.” Leana told her. “You can scream all you’d like. Though, I’d really recommend that you don’t. See, there’s this asshole out there. His name’s Matt, and word around the house is he’s pretty pissed off at you for yelling and screaming all the time.”

“Let him be pissed.” Leigh shrugged. “Maybe then he’ll get the picture and let me go.”

“Oh, no.” Leana told her, shaking her head softly. “Matt won’t just let you go, Leigh. You’re in, and once you’re here, there’s only one way to get out. And that’s to die. So if you really want to leave so badly, just keep screaming. Because eventually, Matt will come in here and he’ll make you be quiet. By killing you. Is that what you want, Leigh? To die here?”

Leigh’s eyes widened slightly at the girl’s words; Johnny had never told her anything like what had just come out of her mouth, and she knew somehow that this girl—Leana, she’d said her name was—wasn’t lying to her. “I’ll die anyway.” She told her, lowering her eyes to the mahogany wooden floor. “I’m in a house with a bunch of fucking psychos.”

“Yes, you are.” Leana said, not bothering to deny it. “But the difference between these psychos and those psychos is that these ones are…Well…They’re merciful, for the most part. They don’t go around killing people left and right. And they’re fair. They won’t do things to people that they don’t already have coming to them. They’re not really psychos, actually, if I come to think about it.”

“Johnny…If that’s even his name…Said that you’re all a bunch of vampires!” Leigh said, her voice a little desperate. “Vampires! Which just simply don’t exist. If that’s not psycho, I don’t know what is.”

“Shh,” Leana said quietly, looking towards the door when she heard what she knew to be Matt yelling, presumably at Johnny. “That was Matt, yelling at Johnny. He’s pretty ticked at Short Shit.”

Leigh didn’t say anything back to Leana, but instead looked down at the photo book in her hands. It was a brown and black leather-bound book, with rope binding on the side and gold writing on the front that spelled out James and Leana Sullivan.

“What’s that?” She finally asked Leana a few minutes later, curiosity getting the best of her. Leana smiled faintly, and then opened the book. The first page had a picture of a girl who looked to be Leana dressed as Belle from the Disney classic Beauty And The Beast and a tall guy who was obviously supposed to be the beast out of the two. They were both smiling happily. Leigh couldn’t understand what Leana was showing this to her for.

“You’re confused, aren’t you?” Leana asked, looking down at the photograph. Leigh nodded, also studying the photo. Leana smiled and chuckled for a moment before continuing. “Well, this is me, obviously, but the guy…Well, he’s the better half of me. His name’s Jimmy.”

“I don’t understand…” Leigh said quietly. Leana nodded, and then continued.

“This picture was taken on Halloween last year. It was at a costume party, here at the mansion. And there’s a reason we’re dressed up as Beauty and the Beast. See, not so long ago I thought he was a beast. I thought he was a monster, just like you think Johnny’s a monster now.”

“What do you mean?” Leigh asked Leana.

“Jimmy…Well, we started out kinda rough, to say the least. We met eight years ago next November, in a dark alley. I was walking home from school when he and one of the other guys, Zack, grabbed me. They brought me back here without saying a word, and I assumed that they were going to rape me or kill me or something like that. I never believed in a million years that they’d taken me because they were trying to help me, but they were.”

“If they were helping you, why’d they kidnap you?” Leigh asked her. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” Leana told her. “To you, it might not, anyway. It makes perfect sense to me now that I can look back at it in hindsight. See, I had this crazy ex-boyfriend. A real jackass. He wasn’t a vampire, not by far. But he was dangerous. He had been following me home that night, and from what Jimmy understands and has told me, he was planning on killing me.”

Leana turned the page, and Leigh gasped. The picture was of Leana, only much different from the first picture. In this photograph, she was bloody and bruised, not happy and beautiful like the girl sitting next to her. “I was the second of the girls to be brought here.” Leana told her, her voice more serious now. “This picture was taken by Jimmy the first time I managed to escape and run away from here.”

“You ran away?” Leigh asked her, her eyebrows shooting up. Leana nodded, and then continued.

“Yeah. I was pretty good at escaping when I wanted to. I used to sneak out all the time in high school…Anyway, that doesn’t matter. This picture…It shows what my ex did to me. I don’t remember much from that night, just bits and pieces. I had just gotten off of the estate and was trying to find my way home. He was in a car on the highway I was walking along, and he pulled over and dragged me into the car. He knocked me out, and the last thing I remember before waking up here is briefly waking up at my ex’s house and feeling him hitting me with a bat or something. Then I woke up here, and Jimmy showed me this picture. He’d taken it when he got me here, as proof that I was safer here with him and the guys than I was out there. And he was right.”

“How was he right?” Leigh asked her, raising her voice. “If he…If he really cared, wouldn’t he have just made sure your ex got arrested and then let you go? You didn’t want to be here; if you were really safe, he would have just let you go.”

Leana gave her a soft smile and shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have. I realized that night that Jimmy was right. I was safer here. The guys, they may never have liked me much, but they had never hit me or threatened to kill me. Well…Actually, Matt did. But I’ll get to that later. The point is, Leigh, that Jimmy was ultimately right. He kept me safe from my ex, and then later, he kept me safe from Matt. You don’t realize how ideal your situation here could be, Leigh. If you would just give Johnny a chance to explain to you what he needs you to hear, you’d understand.”

“You…You said Jimmy protected you from Matt? Isn’t he—“

“A friend of Jimmy’s? Absolutely. They’re like brothers.” Leana nodded. “But that didn’t matter to Matt. Hell, it still doesn’t matter to Matt. He has a short temper with everyone except for Val around here. He never pushes us around, or even yells at us anymore. But that doesn’t mean he likes us much. He’s a good enough guy, and he’s friendly, too. But he’s not someone you want to mess with. And if you get on his bad side…Well, it takes a long time for you to get into his good graces again. A couple of months after Jimmy got me here, I began to get really homesick for my family. I was only seventeen when Jimmy brought me here, so I missed my Mom and Dad, you know. So I began taking it out on Jimmy, even though I knew he’d kept me safe. I started doing a lot of what you do now, screaming and breaking things. I think I busted every window in his bedroom at least three times, and I even managed to bust clear through the bathroom wall once. That was when Matt decided he’d had enough.”

“What?”

“Matt, he pretty much hated me back then.” Leana explained quietly. “And one night when Jimmy had gone out to feed—I wasn’t giving him blood then, and he wouldn’t take it from me unwillingly—, Matt came upstairs and into the bedroom while I was asleep. He’d had it with me, and had warned Jimmy several times to either get me under control or Matt would take it into his own hands. Jimmy, of course, had passed the warnings on to me and pleaded with me to just calm down. But I didn’t listen. I thought Matt was bullshitting Jimmy, trying to be a bully. But he wasn’t. He came into the room that night fully prepared to kill me, Leigh. He almost did it, too. But Jimmy came in and stood between the two of us. He told Matt right in front of me that if he meant to kill me, then he’d have to kill Jimmy first. At that point, Matt was so furious I think he probably would have at least seriously hurt Jimmy, though I have no doubts that he would not have killed him. And then Johnny stepped in. It took several hours, but Matt finally made a compromise that we could all deal with, and now everything is fine.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Leigh asked quietly. Leana sighed and looked at Leigh, her eyes boring into the other girl’s.

“Because Johnny did Jimmy and I a favor, and I’m helping to return that favor.” Leana told her. “Without Johnny, it’s very possible that I’d be dead right now. And I don’t want to see you put in a situation like that.”

Leigh sighed, pushing a hand through her hair. She somehow had a feeling that Leana wasn’t lying to her; that everything she’d just said was the truth. “I’ll talk to him.” She said quietly, looking at Leana. “And I won’t scream anymore. But that doesn’t mean I believe that you’re not a bunch of raving psychopaths.”