"Halle, I think I need to call the police."
Walking into my dorm room, I place my backpack next to my bed and look up at her confused face. I climb up my step stool to the top of my bed and sit down, throwing myself back and looking up at the ceiling. My heart is still racing from what happened earlier. My entirety of time in my last lecture was spent periodically staring out the window, waiting for him to show back up.
"What happened?" Halle asks, her voice traced with humor because she's assuming I'm being overdramatic again. It's a fair assumption, considering that I usually am. I wish I was this time.
I explained my whole day to her, from meeting Eli to being almost kidnapped by his mysterious friend. By the end of my tale, her face is pale as a ghost.
"Hope, do you think he was trying to rape you?" She questions, any ounce of humor that she once held gone now. I'm slightly startled by her assumption but as I start to think about it I realize that she could be right.
"Oh my god, I really do need to call the police," I state, swallowing the lump stuck in my throat. A strange new kid shows up on campus with his even stranger new friend? I should've been more careful from the beginning.
I reach across my bed to grab my cellphone and unlock it before searching the local police nonemergency line. When I find it, I click the number and bring the phone to my ear, waiting for it to dial. Instead of the normal dialing tone, I am met with the phones death tone, letting me know that it isn't going to work. Pulling it away from my face, I look at my phone and realize that I have no service. Damn, maybe my phone bill was due and I missed it. I ignore the slight hint of panic that tells me this could be related to today's incident.
"Can I borrow your phone? Something is wrong with mine," I ask Halle and she nods, tossing her phone to me from where she sits on her bed. I dial the same number as the first time and again wait for it to ring. But, again, I'm met with nothing but silence followed by the unfriendly beeping. I look at the phone and realize that it also has no service.
"I hate this school sometimes, nothing ever works," I groan, tossing the phone back over to Halle.
"Do you think we should go to campus security and report it?" She asks me, eyebrows raised. She is just as worried as I am, which makes sense considering her history.
"I'll do it next time we leave, I just need to calm down and to be honest I'm way too freaked out to leave this room right now," I tell her. She nods her head but still looks concerned.
The rest of the afternoon passes uneventfully with both of us periodically working on homework and binge watching our favorite shows. Eventually, I decide that I need to shower before we go to dinner.
"I'm going to shower and then we can head to the dining hall," I say to Halle and she nods at me, too consumed in her show to pay much attention to what I'm saying.
I gather my shower items before slipping on my flip flops and walking down the hall to the bathroom. Stepping into my favorite stall, I start the water before beginning to undress. When the water is finally hot enough, I step into its welcoming warmth and release the breath I didn't know I was holding. Today has been beyond stressful and I really needed this shower.
Nearing the end of my shower, I rinse the facewash off of myself and shut off the water before freezing in my movements. My eyes widen and my heart begins to race in my chest.
I hear whistling coming from the hallway outside of the bathroom, an eerie, empty sound. Hurriedly, I get dressed and gather my things from the small stall. Before I unlock and open the stall door, I peak out of the crack that separates the stall from the wall. My breathing picks up as I see a dark figure pass by the bathroom door, the whistles echoing from their mouth. The figure continues down the hallway and when the whistling is a comfortable distance away, I fling the stall open and make a run for it. I don't stop running until I reach my dorm and rush into the room, slamming and locking the door behind me.
A scream escapes my mouth and anything I'm holding crash to the ground when I see the scene inside my room. Eli has Halle pinned to the wall by her throat, her feet dangling a foot of the ground. She's crying and struggling to get away and I can almost visibly see the air leaving her body.
"Halle! Let her go!" I scream. I don't move towards them because I'm worried it wouldn't help, but I can't turn my back on her. Taking a step backwards, I bump into something hard. It's not the door, it's warm and breathing. Before I can make a noise, a hand is wrapped around my mouth and another around my waist, holding my arms down. I struggle to get away, but his grip on me is solid and I know in that moment that it is the same guy from a hallway. He's here, in my room, and he's going to hurt me.
"Let's go," the voice behind me directs to Eli, deep and authoritative, leaving no room for questions. Eli doesn't let go of Halle yet, and I struggle against my captor harder in a failed attempt to do something to save her.
"What do we do with her?" Eli asks, gesturing to my roommate who is losing more and more life by the second.
"Kill her."
Nothing can stifle my scream as I watch Eli move his hand ever so slightly, followed by a sickly cracking noise and Halle's limp bodying falling to the ground with a thud.
"And clean up after yourself," the same authoritative voice speaks again. Eli nods, opening the window next to Halle's body. My eyes widen as I watch him pick up her limp body and easily throw it from our third story window. Bile rises in my stomach when I hear the crunching noise that follows the plummet.
"I'm sorry this had to happen, Hope, but when I saw you I knew that it had to be you," Eli says, a sickening grin on his face as we walks past me and out the door of the dorm room, "we have to get her out of here before anyone shows up," he adds to the mass of muscle holding me in place. I'm startled when my body is turned and jolted forward as he starts to make us move. Every chance I get, I struggle against his grip, try to scream, do absolutely anything to get away. I am not going to die today.
Eventually, we make it outside the dorm building as three officers rush into it. My stomach curdles again when I turn and see Halle's body surrounded by shocked and sickened college student. No one will ever know that this was not her, that she didn't have a choice.
"Make a noise and you'll end up like your corpse-friend in the grass over there," he growls into my ear before releasing me from his grip. I'm not completely free, however, because his hand quickly wraps around my wrist, not allowing me to step more than a couple feet away from him. I look around, begging for anyone to help me, but everyone is too preoccupied with the body in the middle of the quad.
We finally reach one of the main parking lots on campus and head towards a black Audi SUV. The windows are tinted beyond what looks legal, the license plates encased by a dark tinted box, and I know the moment I get in the car any ounce of hope I have will be gone. As Eli opens the backdoor, I make a final play for freedom and twist my wrist in his friend's grip, causing him to let go out of shock. After a split second pause of surprise, I take off towards the mass of people not more than fifty feet away.
Making it five feet in that direction, I'm stopped by the dark haired monster standing in front of me. Where did he come from?
"You're really not making this easy," he growls, taking a step towards me. His hand is placed tightly over my mouth again as I'm shoved back to the SUV and forced into the back seat. The door slams behind me. Eli climbs into the drivers seat and the devil himself into the passenger seat.
"What do you want from me?" I ask, wincing at the cracks in my voice. I sound weak, something I can't afford in this position.
"Oh babe, if you only knew the start of it," Eli laughs, winking at me in the rearview mirror.
"It's time for you to be quiet," his friend instructs, reaching into the backseat to tie a bandana around my mouth and a blindfold across my eyes. Hearing is my only major sense left, so I try to use it to my advantage.
But all I can hear is my heart racing inside my chest and the sound of uncertainty in my future.
***
Authors Note: I will be updating as I write, so I will try to get one chapter up a week! Thank you guys! Please let me know what you think
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Black Crown
Vampire"Why me?" "I've been asking myself the same thing since the day I saw you." *** Hope Lancaster had always lived a relatively normal life. School, work, and family. She always knew what was going to happen and where her life would lead her. When a st...
