Reckless

Reckless - Chapter Forty

R E C K L E S S . . .

CHAPTER FORTY

The next hour was agonizingly slow. It took all of my willpower not to bolt for the door and leave the whole situation behind. The only thing that was stopping me from leaving the house was the thought of my mum and little brother being left alone in a house full of supernatural creatures – somehow I knew that the result of that wouldn’t be exactly good.

We sat in the living room – me, Chris, Alexis, Brittany and Darren. Chris rambled on happily, all the while trying to provoke a reaction in me while I studiously ignored him.

Every time that I managed to get out of the room – under the pretence of helping my mum with dinner, checking on Evan, or going to the toilet – they would always be listening intently. The vampires’ sensitive ears would pick up the slightest sound and they would immediately know if I was trying to phone for help. I didn’t know who to call anyway, because I didn’t actually have a way to contact the hunters. I tried to dial the number for Sam and Claire, but I’d hardly punched in one number before I was stopped.

At about my third attempt, instead of a subtle remark or the sight of one of the supernaturals peering through the door, Chris appeared behind me in one of his blindingly fast movements. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Annie,” he murmured in my ear, his arm snaking around me to take the phone from my hands and put it back into the receiver. “Now why don’t you go back to the living room before something unfortunate happens?”

So that was where I found myself when my mum bustled in, all smiles, to tell us that dinner was ready. I was more than eager to escape from the room, even though the supernaturals would follow, and I sprung up immediately.

Things didn’t much improve at dinner, though.

We ate in the kitchen - two humans, three vampires and a werewolf - crowded round the rickety wooden table on an assortment of badly matched chairs and stools. It had been a long time since there'd been so many people at the table. On occasions like Christmas when the whole family was in the house we'd always taken out the table that was crammed into a small storage room which was so full that nobody could move about in it, let alone sit down for a meal. My mum had always hated the thing - a large, ornately carved ebony table that had been her grandmother's - and never sought to bring it out of its hiding place.

I was crammed between Chris and Brittany, my shoulders rubbing against theirs. The only good thing about my position was that I wasn't next to Alexis, who was still glaring at me with as much malice as the night that I had cut off her arm in the first place. I had a feeling that Brittany had purposely played a part in my position, lunging for the seat next to me before anybody else could reach it, and I appreciated her for that.  

My mum walked around the table, serving tomato soup into each person's bowl with a large ladle.  

"This looks delicious, Mrs Forbes," Chris said with relish, grinning down at his own portion of soup.  

To me it just looked like a pool of sickly red blood, but perhaps that was exactly why it entertained him so much. It was an added plus to the vampires that they didn’t have to digest it that much either. Vampire legend seemed to hint towards an aversion to solid food.

"Thank you, Christopher, but I just got it out of the can and heated it - it's nothing too fancy," my mum said, putting the now empty soup pan in the sink with a loud splash. "Anne's little brother is ill, so I've been quite distracted." 

"You have a brother, Anne?" Chris asked. 

I rolled my eyes. Of course he already knew that there was somebody else in the house – he could probably scent Evan even now, hear the faint sound of his breathing, sense the beating of his heart and the rush of blood through his veins.