Trapped in a Vile World

My eyes widened at the sudden intrusion as I frowned at the unwanted visitor.

“Excuse me?” I asked, trying to sound intimidating. He smirked at me, then turned his attention back to Johnny.

“She’ll have to go into exile until we can figure more of this out. It’s too risky to keep her around while they’re hunting for us,” Matt said in a dark tone. I looked away from both of them. Exile? Hunting? He painted a really dark picture. Johnny seemed to sense my uneasiness.

“Exile is a harsh word, Matt. And surely she won’t be sent out alone,” he said persuasively. I smiled at his support. “She’s not ready.” My smile immediately disappeared. Fucking short shit. Surprisingly, Matt nodded in agreement.

“I volunteered to accompany her for the month or so it will take.” My stomach dropped at Matt’s words. No no no no no no.

“But we decided that that wasn’t the best idea,” came Jimmy’s voice from the doorway. I smiled immediately as the happiness warmed me from head to toe. Zacky ducked under his arm, and I practically ran to hug him.

“Easy, tiger,” he laughed, softly pressing his lips to mine. An awkward, forced laugh brought us back to reality. Brian was standing next to Jimmy, his arms crossed with an amused expression.

“We decided to each take a week with you, somewhere very remote,” he said, an unhappy undertone in his voice. I forced a smile, reaching over and squeezing his hand in an attempted comforting gesture.

“So, where will we be vacationing?” I asked, trying to be cheery. Jimmy’s face became a little anxious.

“Well, we’ve decided that it would be best if we changed places each time,” he said quietly. I tried to hide my surprise. “That way, if they track us, you’d be gone by the time they could ready themselves to really do anything.” I nodded understandingly. The guys started discussing locations, completely ignoring me. I started to get angry.

“Seriously?” I asked incredulously, my temper taking over. All five men looked at me in surprise. “You’re going to sit here and discuss my fate in front of me without even asking my opinion on anything? Not whether I like, or am even okay with your plan? Not even about where you’re planning on taking me? Are you fucking serious? You guys plan out my every move, and no offense, but you don’t control me. You can’t make me do anything, and I’m just. UGH!” All five men stood like deer in the headlights while I huffed angrily. As they opened their mouths to speak, I cut them off. “And don’t any of you start in with that ‘we only want what’s best for you’ or ‘we’re only trying to help’ shit, because I don’t want to hear it. You can converse with me with both of those explanations and you choose not to.”

With a loud whoosh, one of the five men disappeared. The four sheepish ones who were left didn’t even seem to notice the absence. I glared at them all before taking off after the missing link. I followed the sound of near silent footsteps to another dead end dirt room. The dim light barely showed the outline of the lanky man as he sat in the center of the room. I approached him silently, but he already knew I was there. I sat behind him, not even an arms length away. I reached out to touch him, but his arm shot out and grabbed my wrist. As he turned and glared at me, I could see the fresh tears streaming down his face. I stopped struggling against his hold, and he shoved my wrist back at me. I moved close enough that I could see his profile in detail in the dim lighting.

“Jim,” I began, but he cut me off.

“You,” he said, his voice shaky and full of accusation. “You’re acting just like she did before she left me. Just like she did when I was trying to save and protect her. How dare you.” The vision of the tale Zacky had told me weeks ago came to life before my eyes. His baby sister Victoria had used him, betrayed him, and broke his heart. She had declared Jimmy and the ideals of the Sullivan’s to be against their nature, and had yelled and cursed the men for trying to shelter her when she was old enough to make her own decisions. My eyes watered as I watched Jimmy’s face contort with agony as his memories tortured him ruthlessly. I threw my arms around his shoulders, holding tight in case he tried to throw me off, but he put up no struggle.

“I’m not your sister,” I whispered into this ear, watching his expression change to surprise. “I’m not going to leave you. Jimmy, I love you. You saved me, even if I ended up becoming what you swore to protect me from. I don’t care. I know all you’re trying to do is help me, but you just leave me out in the cold and expect me to do whatever you decide. Please understand, I’m not mad at you.” Tears now streamed down my cheeks. “I just hate feeling so out of control. These last few months, though I’ve met some amazing people,” he smiled weakly. “I haven’t had control of anything that’s happened around or to me. History doesn’t always repeat itself.” We sat silently for a while, me hugging his shoulders while he tried to calm himself.

“I know you’re not Victoria,” his soft voice finally broke the quiet. “Nor do I know how you found out about her, but when you blew up, all I could see was her leaving that day.” I nodded, letting go of him so he could sit up.

“I’m sorry,” I replied earnestly. “I didn’t mean to get angry, but I’ve just been so frustrated, and you guys trying to talk about and plan what I was going to do right in front of me wasn’t exactly helping.” He smiled, though it didn’t quite touch his eyes.

“Well, do you have any suggestions?” he asked, his tone amused. I pursed my lips, trying not to smile.

“Uhm, I remember Matt saying at some point that outside temperature doesn’t really effect your – I mean our bodies. Maybe we should go somewhere up north where it’s freezing and there are no humans.” His eyes widened a bit at my suggestion before he chuckled.

“I guess we did underestimate your planning skills. I suppose we overcompensated for your newborn state and didn’t give you enough credit,” he mumbled to himself. I smiled, beyond proud that I’d come up with something that the guys hadn’t managed to think of. “But I definitely like the idea. No human settlements would make it hard for a tracker to tolerate following us. But you do realize that we’d run into the same problem.” I blinked, stunned. No, I hadn’t considered the fact that we, like our new enemies, were vampires who needed blood to survive. He smirked a little, his eyes dancing in the light. “Didn’t think of everything, did we?” I narrowed my eyes as he laughed again. “Well, we basically have a few options. Taking a supply of blood is pretty much out of the question, because we don’t exactly want it to freeze.”

“Bloodcicles, yum yum!” I snickered. He chuckled a bit before continuing.

“We could always feed in small amounts off of each other, but that would weaken our physical states and make surviving in extreme cold even harder.” I gasped at the suggestion. “Tera, the reality of the situation is, vampires do drink other vampires’ blood. It was used as a torture method back in the wars, but it’s not entirely gruesome. Our other option is to feed off of the artic animals. Wolves, bunnies, foxes…”

“Polar bears!” I half shouted, and he rolled his eyes.

“Not even I want to tackle a full grown polar bear. Those things are vicious,” he commented.

“Awh, afraid of the big bad polar bear?” I asked in a voice used to coddle a child. He raised his eyebrows, unamused.

“Okay, how about I feed you to some artic sharks?” he countered, and I rolled my eyes, but left it at that. We planned out the rest of the trips, most of which were in areas with extreme conditions: poles, the tropics, a dessert, and the safari. Between the extreme cold, heat, drought, and large array of hunting animals, we’d picked some of the most dangerous places on earth.

When we returned to the others, the atmosphere was tense. None of them had dared to leave the room after my outburst, for which I readily apologized. Once Jimmy and I had explained the plan we had come up with, we decided who would be going where with me: Jimmy to the far north, Brian to the far south, Johnny to the desert, Zacky to the tropics, and Matt to the safari.

After everything was settled, we all broke of to get some rest before the long day of packing and prep we had ahead of us. I settled into Zacky’s waiting arms, trying to get comfortable on the wobbly cot. He was asleep long before I was. I laid awake, thinking of the long, hard journey that I’d have to endure to try and save the men I’d come to think of as my family. The thought of such sound plan should have comforted me, but as I drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t help but think there was more to this than we knew.