Obsessed (Book #12 in the Vampire Journals) (18 page)

“I’m your worst
nightmare,” she said.

The woman’s face
drained entirely of color. When she looked down to see the town lights
twinkling below her, she began to scream again.

Vivian was
loving every second of this. She looked back to make sure Blake had followed
her orders. Sure enough, there he was, holding Jasmine’s father in his arms,
following his sire dutifully through the night sky. He did not look happy.
Vivian was starting to get really annoyed with him. When exactly was he going
to get over himself and start enjoying it? The world was descending into
anarchy, with Blake and Vivian at the top of the food chain!

Jasmine’s mother
screamed the whole flight to the center of town. But once they reached the main
high street, her screams changed.

“I see her!” she
shouted suddenly. “I see Jasmine.”

Vivian squinted
into the distance and sure enough, there she was. Jasmine was with Becca in a
parking lot, crouching behind a row of cars as chaos reigned round them. Vivian
assumed that since they were hiding they couldn’t have yet been turned. Good.
That meant she’d get the pleasure of ending their lives.

However, as they
got closer, she realized that Scarlet was nowhere to be seen. Vivian hoped she
wasn’t too far from her friends. They’d practically been glued together when
they were human; she couldn’t think of a reason why they’d be separate now.

Vivian turned
back and gestured to Blake who was lagging behind. She beckoned him to follow
her and together they hovered over the parking lot where Jasmine and Becca were
hiding. From beneath her, Jasmine’s mom started calling for her daughter.

“Jasmine! Jasmine,
sweetheart! Are you okay?”

Jasmine looked
up. Her face turned to an expression of utter horror. She leapt up from her
hiding place and ran into the middle of the parking lot, looking up the whole
time, shouting for her parents. Becca tried to drag her back into the shadows
and out of danger but nothing was stopping Jasmine. She ran like a woman
possessed and screamed for her parents.

“Mom! Dad!”

Vivian felt a
smile tug at the side of her lips. She looked over at Blake, who was stony faced.

“On the count of
three,” she said. “One, two, three.”

And with that,
Vivian and Blake dropped Jasmine’s parents. They tumbled through the air before
landing in the parking lot with a horrible thud.

Jasmine shrieked
and raced towards the deathly still bodies of her parents.

Vivian looked at
Blake.

“Having fun
yet?” she said slyly.

Blake kept his
eyes fixed to the ground, on the sight of Jasmine weeping over her parent’s
bodies. His expression wasn’t one of excitement and joy, but of guilt. Vivian
rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” she
demanded, “let’s go and talk to the freak’s little friends.”

She flew down to
the parking lot where Jasmine was howling with grief, Becca trying to comfort
her.

Blake followed
his leader silently, his expression as cold as ice.

*

Vivian coiled her
fingers into Becca’s hair, making the girl wince. Both Becca and Jasmine had
been forced to their knees in the middle of the parking lot, at the complete
mercy of Vivian and Blake. Though Blake was executing his torture with
lacklustre, Vivian was still having the time of her life.

“Tell us where
Scarlet is!” she screamed in Becca’s face. “Before I fly to your house and kill
your parents in front of you.”

Jasmine wailed
at the memory of her parents’ death being brought to the forefront of her mind
by Vivian’s words.

“I told you,”
Becca pleaded. “I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen Scarlet for days.”

“I don’t believe
you!” Vivian screamed. “You’re protecting her, I know you are.”

“Protecting her
from what?” Becca shot back. “You? You think you’re some big shot vampire now?
Well look around Vivian—
everyone
in town’s been turned! You’re nothing
special. How exactly would I be protecting her from lying to you about her
whereabouts?”

Becca’s words
enraged Vivian. She twisted her fingers more deeply into Becca’s hair, making
the girl cry out in pain.

“What’s your
problem with Scarlet anyway?” Becca cried, not about to give up. “She never did
anything to you. She even saved your life once, or have you conveniently
forgotten?”

“She stole my
boyfriend,” Vivian hissed.

Becca narrowed
her eyes.

“And then you
turned him into a vampire,” she hissed. “So you won, Vivian. You’ve got a nice
little lapdog to follow you around for eternity. So why don’t you just let it
go?”

Blake was
expressionless beside Vivian, his face unreadable. He didn’t seem to be
engaging with the situation at all. It was as though he’d shut down completely.

Vivian wrenched
Becca’s head back, exposing her neck.

“You see, I
actually
am
a big shot vampire. Just like I was a big shot human. Some
people, like me, are just better than people like you. We make better
cheerleaders and better vampires. And way better girlfriends. So, yeah, I have
won. I was always winning. What I want now is to make Scarlet Paine suffer.”

“God!” Becca
cried. “Are you really that petty and jealous? Scarlet doesn’t even like Blake
anymore. She’s completely in love with someone else.”

Vivian couldn’t
help notice the way Blake suddenly snapped to attention when Becca said that
Scarlet didn’t like him anymore. If Blake still had feelings for Scarlet she
didn’t know what she’d do.

Vivian wanted to
let her rage out on Becca. She bared her fangs, ready to end the girl’s life,
when suddenly, something in the sky caught her attention. She looked up and
narrowed her eyes. Someone was flying through the sky at top speed, heading in
the direction of the Hudson river. Even from this distance, Vivian recognized
Scarlet. She felt herself fill with hatred.

She dropped
Becca and turned to Blake.

“Come on,” she
snapped, all pretences of being in love completely dropped.

Blake rose into
the air, following his sire with about as much enthusiasm as a downtrodden
husband. Vivian was enraged that he wasn’t in love with her. That even the
power of her siring him was not enough to make him fall in love with her. She
was going to take out all her anger on Scarlet. She was going to make Scarlet
suffer.

As the two
vampires rose into the air, the sun was just starting to reach the horizon.
Morning was about to break.

The morning that
would change everything.

Police Officer
Sadie Marlow was sitting in her patrol car, preoccupied by thoughts of Maria,
the mentally unwell girl she’d met in the hospital, and the police chief’s
reaction to Maria’s premonition of an impending vampire war. After the girl had
descended into silence, Sadie and her partner, Brent Waywood, had been ushered
away, told to go back to the station and await further instruction. Then it had
been hours of silence, of evasion, of Sadie’s questions going unanswered. And
so, as the night began to draw to an end, bringing with it the last hour of
Sadie’s shift, she’d found herself in her patrol car with Brent responding to a
residential disturbance, none the wiser about what was going on.

She was just
pulling up to the curb of the house in question when the patrol car’s radio
crackled and a voice sounded out. It wasn’t the usual emergency call operator’s
voice, but the police chief’s.

“Officer Marlow,
I need you in the center of town. Now.”

Sadie leaned
forward and hit the respond button.

“This is Officer
Marlow. I’m already responding to a reported 911, sir, way out in the suburbs.
May I request another unit assist you?”

The radio buzzed
immediately with a response.

“All other units
are already assisting me.”

Sadie sat back,
a frown across her face. She and Brent exchanged a glance. He shrugged. Office
Marlow pressed the button.

“Sir, can I have
more information?” she requested.

The chief
officer responded in an angry tone.

“Don’t make me
tell you twice, Marlow. Get your butt down here.”

In the seat
beside Sadie, Officer Brent Waywood began to laugh. Sadie found her partner’s
response inappropriate. The chief sounded harried, and something big was
clearly going down. But typically of Brent, he was unable to take anything
seriously. Worse, he’d often criticize Sadie herself for taking things too
seriously. Sadie had lost count of the number of times she’d told him that, as
police officers, it was a pretty key part of their job description to take
things seriously.

“Sounds like someone’s
having a bad day,” Brent scoffed under his breath.

Sadie gave him a
sideways glance but didn’t respond. Instead, she clicked the button on the
radio in order to the open the channel to speak.

“Chief, I’m not
meaning to be difficult,” Sadie said into the radio. “But I need more
information on the situation you’re calling me to. Do you have a code?”

Sadie was a
level headed officer. She wasn’t about to dive head first unprepared into a
situation just because her chief had threatened her.

“There isn’t a
code in the book for this situation, Marlow,” came his response.

Sadie’s felt her
frown grow even stronger across her forehead. What exactly was going on?

“Sir…” she
began, but her chief cut her off.

“How about
1-8-7,” he said.

Sadie shivered.
A 187 meant homicide. It was just about the last call an officer on duty wanted
to hear. Policing a murder was a pretty grim end to what had already proved to
be one of the most unpleasant shifts Sadie Marlow had had.

Sadie was about
to reply but the police chief hadn’t finished.

“With some
2-4-0, 2-4-2 and a whole load of 6-0-4 thrown in.”

Assault.
Battery.

“What the hell
is going on, sir?” Sadie said into the radio. “How many perps are we talking
about here?”

Through the buzz
and crackle of the radio static, Sadie and Brent heard something that made them
both freeze with shock.

“Looks like it’s
every damn kid from the high school,” the chief said.

The two officers
looked at one another. They were less than an hour away from finishing their
shift and now they were being summoned to what sounded like a teenage riot. No,
not a teenage riot—teenage riots didn’t usually escalate to murder. This
sounded more like a teenage rampage.

Leaping into
action, Sadie flicked on the siren.

“We’re on our
way, chief,” she said as the blue lights flashed above her and the siren
wailed.

She hit the gas
and the cruiser sped towards town. She didn’t know what she was going to find
when she got there, but something told her it would be a scene she never forgot.

*

Sadie and Brent
arrived in the center of town to find a line of police cars positioned across
the road, blocking access. They screeched on their brakes and parked beside
them.

Sadie was
shocked. The scene ahead was one of absolute carnage. Teenagers were milling
all over the streets, smashing cars, climbing lamp posts, yanking fire hydrants
right out of the sidewalk. The chief was right when he said it looked like
every kid in the high school. There must have been a thousand of them.

If Sadie hadn’t
been looking at it with her own eyes, there was no way she’d believe what was
happening. There wasn’t a code in the manual that could cover all the felonies
unfolding before her eyes. She saw a young girl, who didn’t look more than
fifteen, with heavy black make-up and streaked purple hair swinging a car above
her head like it didn’t weigh a thing. Beside her, a couple of grungy looking
boys were terrorizing a young woman, letting her run from them, then dragging
her back, then letting her go again. She’d lost her shoes, her tights were ripped,
and her hair was a mess from constantly being grabbed. The whole scene filled
Sadie with revulsion.

Despite years of
training, Sadie found that her hands were shaking. She secured her bullet and
stab proof jacket and commanded Brent to do the same.

Unlike Sadie,
Officer Waywood was raring to go.

“Time to teach
these punks some respect,” he said, clicking a magazine into his firearm.

“Be careful,”
Sadie warned him, preparing her own weapon.

But Brent was
already out of the car, gun raised, in full battle mode.

As Sadie climbed
out of the squad car, she couldn’t help but think again of Maria. Could the
chaos unfolding before them be somehow related to what the girl had spoken of?
Was this the vampire war she had warned them about? At the time, Sadie had felt
a strong compulsion to listen to the girl’s words, to consider that what she
was saying may hold an element of truth. But after she and Brent had been
dismissed and sent back to the station, she’d had time to reflect, to ridicule
herself for getting wrapped up in the moment.

Now, she felt
there was a chance she’d been right to heed Maria’s warning all along.  If
Maria had been telling them the truth, then the vampire war she’d spoken of was
starting.

Sadie was about
to inch herself forward and join the other police when got distracted by the
screeching sirens of army vehicles approaching from behind. Ten big black
trucks pulled up behind the line of police cruisers, as camouflaged men and
woman rushed out, carrying riot shields and heavy artillery. Sadie realized with
a start that the National Guard had been called in. Why would the military get
involved with some teenager thuggery? Unless they knew, too, that they were
dealing with the beginning of a war.

If there was any
doubt in Sadie’s mind they were dealing with something paranormal, it was wiped
out by the reaction of the teenagers to the approaching military. Moving as
though they possessed a hive mind, the thousand strong crowd of kids leapt up
into the air and hovered fifty feet above their heads. The police officers
stared upwards in complete shock.

The military,
though, sprung into action. They began shooting at the flying high schoolers,
the sound of gunfire filling the air.

But the kids, to
Sadie’s shock, just whizzed around, moving faster than Sadie could keep up with
them. They dodged the speeding bullets with ease.

“Bullets don’t
kill vampires,” Sadie said aloud.

But there was no
one near her, no one who would listen. She reached down, grabbing the megaphone
from her glove compartment and clicking it on. But before she had a chance to
say anything, something else caught her attention. Racing along the road,
coming from the direction of the city jail, was a group of men in striped
prison uniforms.

“Escaped
convicts!” Sadie cried into the megaphone, addressing the officers who were
still staring up at the sky. “We have escaped convicts!”

Nothing in her
police training had prepared her for this. She watched, numb, horror-struck, as
the scene unfolded around her. The national guard stopped firing into the sky
and changed tactics, this time charging the convicts who, being human, weren’t
impervious to being battered by riot shields.

But the vampires
hovering above them weren’t going to let the police take down their partners in
crime. They swooped down from where they’d been hovering, like birds of prey,
and pounced. Once again, shots ran out, but Sadie knew bullet were useless
against this vampire army. The little metal pellets ricocheted off them, doing
little more than slowing them down for a second.

Sadie caught a
glimpse of Brent Waywood amongst the rabble. He was wrestling with a vampire in
a cheerleader outfit, who snapped her bared fangs at him. Watching her partner
grapple with a girl half his height, who couldn’t weigh more than 100 pounds, was
a sight Sadie could hardly comprehend.

Finally coming
to her senses, Sadie realized the best thing she could right now was evacuate
the civilians. Many houses and shops were already empty, their doors and
windows smashed in. Others were blazing infernos. But somehow, through all the
chaos, Sadie heard someone crying.

She raced away
towards a parking lot where the noise was coming from. She saw that two bodies
were lying on the tarmac face down. It was a man and a woman and they were both
clearly dead. The crying noises were coming from behind a row of parked cars.

Sadie rushed
over. Behind the cars she saw two teenage girls crouching, huddled together.
When they saw her, they both leapt to their feet and screamed.

“I’m not a
vampire!” Sadie said.

The girls
clutched each other and began to tremble. But they seemed to believe Sadie.

“I’m a police
officer,” Sadie added, trying to calm the girls with her voice, “and I can get
you to safety.”

Even as she said
it, she wasn’t so sure she could. What if the vampires had reached the station?
What if it wasn’t just New York that was overrun with them, but the whole
world? Could Sadie be witnessing the beginning of the end of the human race?

Whatever
thoughts and doubts raced through her mind, Sadie knew she had to try. She
hadn’t become a police officer to baulk at the sign of danger. If the only
thing she achieved this evening was stopping two young girls from losing their
lives in a brutal, violent manner, then she was going to do it.

Sadie gestured
to the girls with her hand, palm up and inviting.

“I can take you
to my car,” she said. “Drive you somewhere safe.”

“There is nowhere
safe,” one of the girls cried. She was rocking backwards and forwards, her
knees tucked into her chest, and her gaze kept darting over her shoulder at the
bodies in the parking lot.

“Do you know
them? Sadie asked gently.

The girl
dissolved into sobs. Her friend put her arm around her.

“They’re her
parents,” the second girl said.

Sadie felt
overwhelmed with sadness. She couldn’t get her head round what was happening.
It was as though the world as she knew it had been flipped on its head, like
she was living a nightmare from which she knew she would never wake up.

“I’m sorry for
your loss,” Sadie said, trying to be sympathetic. “But we can’t stay here. If
we leave town we might have a chance.”

“I’m not leaving
them!” the first girl screamed.

Her friend
looked torn with indecision. She didn’t want to abandon her friend in her time
of need; but she also didn’t want to die tonight.

“Look,” Sadie said
to the girl who wasn’t crying. “I’m going to get my squad car. When I get back,
you can either come with me or not. If you don’t, I’ll just find someone else
who needs saving. Got it?”

The girl bit her
lip and nodded.

Sadie glanced
over her shoulder, trying to see if the way was clear. When she turned back to
the girl, she said, “Tell me your name.”

“I’m Becca,” the
girl said. “This is Jasmine.”

“Okay,” Sadie
said. “Sit tight, Becca. Keep her calm. I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

As Sadie raced
back across the streets for her squad car, she noted that the chaos had
intensified. The national guard were locked in a vicious battle with the
escaped inmates and the vampires were piling into the fight. But coming from
the same direction as the jail, Sadie saw a man flying through the air. When he
landed on top of a police truck, the vampires stopped what they were doing and
turned to him. He was clearly some kind of leader, someone important.