THE VAMPIRE UNDERGROUND

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

She braced for impact, but she crashed not against hard dirt ground but a pair of arms that felt as soft as her velvety pillow.

“I’ve got you,” Paul said, and Brin looked up to see his face in full view for the first time. His eyes were striking, the color of forest green. His brown auburn hair was short, wavy, and perfect, and his muscles, small but blossoming below his shoulders, glowed underneath an ancient lampshade.

Brin looked up at Paul, and Paul looked down at Brin. Her left arm draped down toward the ground, and she realized in this moment she was the damsel in distress, and he was her Prince Charming.

A prince who drinks blood and prefers to stay indoors, she thought.

“You got me,” she said. “Now will you let me go?”

“You want me to?”

“Yeah. But first, could you—”

He let her go before she could finish and she crashed against the dusty ground this Paul fellow called his carpet.

 “Thanks,” she said, facetiously.

“No problem,” Paul said, not recognizing her sarcasm, sitting down at an old, grandfatherly table a few feet behind her. Of course he only had one chair, so when Brin stood back up, she had nowhere to sit down. “Sorry, I don’t have another chair,” he continued. “I rarely have company.”

“Looks like you don’t have any company,” Brin said, surveying the dank room. She didn’t see any doors, except for a large metallic one behind her. The four walls that surrounded her were the extent of this guy’s home. There was a tiny twin bed in one corner, and a tall, impressive bookshelf in another. The last corner of the room had a giant cooler.

“You want to sit down?” Paul said, motioning to the chair.

“What’s in that cooler over there?” Brin said, ignoring his question.

He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

Brin sighed. “I probably don’t.”

He stood up from the chair, but she shook her head, leaning her butt up against the table. “I prefer to stand. I need to…” She looked around the room again. “Jesus. Don’t you get claustrophobic in here?”

“Not at all.”

“I would go crazy if I lived in a place like this.”

Silence ensued for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve actually never had someone down here before.”

She narrowed her eyebrows and shot him a confused look. “Never?”

“No. I’ve been banished from the Underground for a long time. They don’t know I’ve returned. At least… I don’t think they do.”

“The Underground?” Brin said. “What’s the Underground?”

“It’s where we live. Well… where they live.”

“The vampires.”

Paul shook his head and tapped his fingers against his sides. “I told you. We don’t like to be called that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “we differ from vampires in one major sense.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?”

Brin’s eyes went wide. “How could I not ask questions? Any normal person in my position right now would be asking a thousand questions!”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

“May I ask you…” Brin crossed her arms and sighed, thoughtfully. “How did you get this way?”

Paul stared at her with his large eyes, two holes of green that surrounded a pasty white face. He didn’t say anything for a moment. But before Brin moved on to a less invasive question, he brought his hand to her leg and scooted up close to her.

“I’ve been dead a long time. But the dead part? It’s actually been better than the part when I was alive.”

“What do you mean? How long have you been dead?”

“As I said, a long time.” He looked down, running his fingers against Brin’s leg. “The bastard turned me… before I could escape… before I could finally be free.”

Brin noticed that Paul now had two hands on her leg instead of one. She knew she didn’t have time to listen to this vampire’s life story; she needed to push this vampire away, jump out of the shack, and start running again, this time not three miles out of Bodie, but three hundred. But she also knew being on her own right now was the fastest way to getting butchered, and she felt safe with Paul, at least for the time being. She could trust him.

I think I can trust him.

Brin brought her hand toward Paul’s. “Who’s the man that did this to y—”

“Shh!” Paul jumped up to his feet and leaned against Brin, clasping his hand around her mouth again.

She didn’t say another word. She tried not to even breathe.

All she could think was: Now what?

“I heard something,” he said. “Stay here a second.”

Brin didn’t like playing the damsel in distress, but she nodded anyway, and sat down on Paul’s chair.

“Don’t move,” he said, before leaping up from the table to the ground above.

Brin stayed put and curled into a ball. She started rocking herself back and forth before she realized it had been a long while since she last checked her cell phone, even though she knew it was more likely to have service at the center of Jupiter than here underneath this forgotten city.

She didn’t have any bars at the top of her phone—surprise, surprise—but she was able to see the time. It was 1:01 A.M.

Somebody has to have called for help by now, she thought. Six people left their families this morning, and six people were expected to be home hours ago. There has to be someone on the way. There has to be.

Brin put the phone back in her pocket. She looked up toward the hole in the ceiling and realized she hadn’t heard any movement in over a minute. 

“Paul?” she whispered.

She leaned forward and turned in a way so she could look up at the floor above.

As soon as she did, Paul crashed back down toward her.

And he wasn’t alone.