What Lies Beneath

I felt bad for him. As badly as I could for a stranger. "How long have you been alone now?" This, he seemed less reluctant to tell me. "Just over three hundred-and-twenty-five years." My eyebrows shot up again. "Holy fuck. How old are you?"

"Three-hundred-and-ninety-nine."

I laughed. "That is so specific. How's it feel to be pushing the big four-oh-oh?"

"Shut up." He smiled and laughed.

"Is it true that life starts at three hundred?"

"Mila," he warned.

"Do you get a discount when you go to the movies?"

"Bite me, kid."

"I think we both know you're the biter here, baby, not me. Just curious." I put my chin on my hand. "Are those real teeth or dentures?"

"How about I bite you when you're awake. You can find out."

That sounded absurdly sexy, and I wished I knew why. "Maybe not."

He shrugged. "Your loss."

"Yeah, I'm so sure I'm missing out."

Then he smirked, making me think that I might actually be. "It all depends. Some people actually enjoy being fed from."

My nose wrinkled. "How is that possible?"

"It's the person, sometimes the context. If they're being attacked, of course it would be unpleasant. Under different circumstances, it's something else." "Like during sex? Gross."

"Not during, you filthy minded thing. Before. Some people view blood exchange as a bonding and intimate thing."

"You?"

"No. It's food."

I scratched the side of my head. "So, um, you've never... during?"

He looked at me seriously. "I've never actually had sex."

My eyes bugged out. "Huh?"

Then he laughed at me. Like, way too much. "For a con artist, you believed that far too quickly. I'm four hundred. I've had sex a couple times."

I should hit him, but he's driving. "Obviously I didn't believe you," I lied. "I just wanted to make sure I heard you right." "Sure you did."

Whatever. It wouldn't have been terribly hard to believe. A man who claims to have no heart, and who's been alone for most of his life, may not have made sex a priority. But he's a guy, so I guess it's not the same for him. Landon pulled over after taking an exit I wasn't paying attention to. "Hungry?" "Sure."

He went through the drive thru, and I didn't let myself have PTSD flashbacks to when my brother was taken from a place like this. I just watched Landon order for himself and then ask what I wanted. I told him. And he got it wrong. I spent about thirty seconds trying to correct him before he gave up.

"Got hair in your ears, old man?" I asked as I unbuckled. "Respect your elders."

I leaned over him, having to rest my body on his lap. He leaned back, and I almost had my head out the window. It took three whole minutes to get the order fixed, and I nearly smashed the talking box thing. "Yeah, I want the bread." I sighed.

"And the meat?" the soon-to-be-dead employee asked.

"Yeah, I want the burger part of the burger."

"Would you like a drink with that?"

"The one I ordered a minute ago, yes." I looked back at Landon because I needed to be reminded that there were witnesses here.

He patted my ass. "If you'd like, I can go in there and beat him up for you."

"Such an angel, you are. Maybe just scare him a little."

"Ma'am?" the boy said through the box. "Did you want cheese?"

I took three deep breaths and cursed the day I was born. "Yes, sir, I would like cheese on my cheeseburger. And if you don't mind, maybe some ketchup." "Why would I mind?"

It was very uncomfortable, lying on a stranger in this position. I'd been doing it for far too long, and I was ready to kill someone. "I hate you," I mumbled. "What? I didn't catch that?"

I sat up and stared at Landon. "I'm not hungry anymore."

He sighed and forced me back down. "Let me take care of this." He proceeded to harshly tell the boy my order. Without actually threatening him, he made it sound like he would get murdered if he fucked it up. "Thank you."

"No problem."

"And don't touch my ass again."

His eyebrow arched. "You can't put that within touching distance and tell me to keep my hands off. It's cruel."

"I wouldn't have had to lean on you if you could have remembered no onions and extra pickles."

He didn't have a response. He pulled up to the window, paid for our food, and we parked.

They'd actually got my order right. I sipped my soda and focused on not looking at the phone in the other cup holder. Then Landon grabbed it, and shoved it in the glove box.

"Why did you do that?" I almost growled.

"That was his, right?"

"Is. It is his."

"I understand, but making yourself upset isn't going to help. You don't know what might be coming next. Keep a clear head."

He wasn't giving me much of a choice in the matter. Maybe he had a point, but I was allowed to be scared. He was my big brother. He could be getting tortured for all I knew, and I was just sitting here, hoping we stumbled on him. Landon finished eating before I did. He started driving, and I went back to looking out the window. I wanted to believe we were moving closer to where Jax was being kept.

"This place," Landon said. "They hold a lot of people there."

"Are you saying that to make me feel better or worse?"

"I wouldn't try and make you feel worse. I get nothing from that."

"Don't you? Doesn't it make you happy knowing the girl who took what you wanted is miserable?"

"No. I've done far worse things for less."

I didn't ask because I didn't want to know. It wasn't important to me. Who he was right at this moment was. And it wasn't like I would kick him to the curb if he told me a horror story about his life as a killer. I still needed him.

We were in L.A. before the workday was over. I'd been there many times for many reasons. Jaxon enjoyed it there, but it hadn't been right for us to stick around, so we hadn't.

Landon parked the van in a parking garage that was slowly emptying. The cars around us all looked nice. Nicer than my van for sure.

"Why are we here?" I asked.

He turned the engine off and put the keys in his pocket. "We're half-a-mile out from one of the places they stash the people they sell. If we wait until dark, then we can break in and look for Jaxon."

"How long till then?"

"Maybe a half hour."

And so we waited. We didn't talk or try to. Everything was too tense. I could be a half mile away from my brother. Maybe an hour away from ending this nightmare. Jaxon and I could get back to our lives. Landon could get back to... whatever he'd been up to before I screwed with his life.

When the sun went down, we left the van and started walking. I stuck close to his side for fear of L.A. at night. Not a very safe place. I kept bumping against his side when I looked around for danger. Landon didn't seem to care.

The place where he'd stopped looked unassuming. That must have been the point. It was a long-but-small-looking building. One floor at best. I didn't believe for a moment that it was all it seemed.

There were no cars in the small lot around it. It was on a corner, surrounded by more small buildings. One was a tattoo shop. Another was a grocery store that looked like something out of a horror movie.

"Don't leave my side," Landon ordered me.

"Wasn't planning on it."

He took me by the arm and started leading me alongside the building. There were a few doors, two of which were locked with massive chains.

"Can you break those?" I asked.

He glanced over at them. "Maybe. But those aren't our concern. We're going through a window."

I stopped walking. "A window?"

"Best way in without being seen. There's no telling how many guards are down there."

I didn't think of that. "What happens if we get into a fight?"

He thought. "You hide and try not to die."

"And you?"

"I fight. And try not to die."

"Great plan," I said sarcastically.

"Thank you." He smiled.

He found a window at the bottom of the wall. Landon lowered me inside first, and then he hopped down. We landed in the middle of a hallway, short and dark. The carpet was pink and the walls white. All the doors were shut, but there was nothing to indicate what was behind them.

Landon put his arm around my waist to pull me along. "We need to hurry, dove. We don't have a lot of time."

He dragged me down the hallway and through a door. I couldn't see much, but Landon seemed confident in where we were going. The next door we went through led to a staircase. We started walking down.

"Landon," I whispered, "how do you know where we're going?"

He looked back at me and stuck with my volume. "Never you mind, kid. We're here for you, not me."

And that was that.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs; it was pitch black. My hand found Landon's and held it tightly. He squeezed mine back. "You'll live through this if you're careful."

"The reason we're here is because I'm not careful."

"And you decided to threaten a vampire. Don't forget that."

I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see that. "I didn't know you were a vampire when I threatened you."

"Would you have still done it?"

"Probably."

There was a quiet laugh. "You'll get yourself killed one day, darlin'."

"I don't care if I die, just as long as I fix what I did."

He didn't respond. Instead, he chose to let go of me and keep walking. I went with him, following with trust I shouldn't have for a man who'd told me he was a killer. But love was irrational. He could have told me that he'd burnt down a village, and I'd still follow him if he said he could get me back my brother.

He stopped suddenly, and I slammed into his back. I opened my mouth to talk, and he put his hand over it. "Hush," he hissed at me. He held me to him and didn't loosen his grip.

I listened and heard the faintest hint of footsteps. His senses must be much better than mine. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my knife. I kept it close to my chest so that I wouldn't drop it.

In my ear, I heard, "Not yet." He released my mouth.

"When?"

"When I die."

The steps were getting closer. "If you die, I'm kinda fucked."

"True, but I'm sure that won't stop you from fighting."

"True."

The door opened before I was even finished with my sentence. It was only one man. He was very clearly a guard. His uniform gave that away, and he had the look of a man who'd spent a lot of each day sitting. There was a moment where the man seemed surprised to see anyone at all. It made him hesitate reaching for the Taser at his side. Landon went for him, and I held my knife tightly.

The man noticed Landon before he got to him. He sidestepped the vampire, and that put him very close to me. I didn't have time to flick my blade out before the guard had me against the wall. He was trying to wrestle the knife out of my hands when Landon spun him around and sent his fist into the man's nose. He yelled in pain, and Landon grabbed my knife from me. In three seconds Landon flicked out the blade, sank it into the guard's throat, and shoved him onto the ground.

My eyes were so wide that they were burning. It wasn't the first death I'd seen close up. The blood brought me right back to that day. The way the man fell. He wasn't quite dead when he hit the floor. He choked on his own blood in the ten seconds it took him to die. I watched because I couldn't do anything else. I had to be dragged away by Landon.

We were in another hallway. I was trying to breathe, and he was so calm. He wiped the blood from my knife onto his pants and handed it back to me. "Thanks."

I took it, half numb. The knife hadn't ever been used to do more than scare off a few boys who didn't take no for no. But now it had taken a life. "You killed him."

He looked at me as if I was slow. "Yes. And?"

"You killed him," I said again.

"He would have hurt you. Are you really bothered?"

It's one thing knowing he's killed and a whole different thing seeing it. But he wouldn't understand. So I lied. "No."

He studied me for a moment before moving again. He made his way to the door at the far side of the room. When he opened it, it was another staircase.

He turned and stopped me from walking. "Try and stay calm. You're about to see something that might break a fragile mind."

"I'm not fragile," I said through my teeth.

"If only, sweetheart."

He opened the door to a very dark room. He knew where to find the light.

And I wished he hadn't.

I saw cages. A dozen maybe. Each had a person, a demon, in it. They were on the floor, asleep or dead. I wasn't sure. They all looked sick. Dying. Wishing they were dead. They looked beaten and weary. Landon pulled me away.

I was full on shaking now. I might have fallen if he hadn't been holding me. How the hell did he know about this place?

He steadied me. "Do you see him anywhere?"

I forced myself to look around. My eyes studied each body. None of them looked like my brother. "No."

He sighed. "Do you have a picture?"

That was something I did actually have. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, leaving my knife in its place. I pulled up a picture of my brother. The one that went off when he called me. It hurt me to see it.

Landon took the phone from me and looked at the picture. "Let's start." He moved to the cage on the furthest end of the room and leaned down. He banged on the cage, and the girl in it moved her head up. "Have you seen this man?" He held the picture up.

She squinted her eyes at it then shook her head. We repeated this with the next seven people. A few wouldn't even wake up, and the others didn't know who he was.

"Hey," a man called out from a cage. We both turned to look at him. He was just as weary looking as the rest of these people, but he was sitting up. "Who are you looking for?"

"My brother," I said. "Has anyone new been brought by today?" I was walking before I knew it. I bent down and showed him the picture. "Have you seen him?"

The man studied the picture, then he looked at me. "Yeah. I have."