“But you haven’t even told us how to get her out of The Underworld,” I cried.

Laylen’s bright blue eyes went so wide they practically bulged out of his head, and I realized I should not have opened my mouth.

“Yes, that is true.” He pressed me tighter into him—

too tight—and I winced from the pressure. Moving his mouth to my ear, he purred, “However, if you didn’t know her, then why would it matter whether I told you anything?”

Great. Me and my stupid mouth. I was starting to understand why Alex always seemed to be telling me to keep my mouth shut.

Vladislav let out a deep growl, and then his fangs sunk into my neck. They sunk in deeper and deeper, and I gasped as I was blinded by images flickering through my mind like a flashing picture show.

Vampires. Teeth. Stars. Alex. I felt faint. Lightheaded.

Dizzy and weak, yet at the same time relaxed. The prickle was poking my neck wildly. My vision went blurry. And then, all of a sudden, I felt content with Vladislav biting my neck.

It was okay….

Okay…

There was a sharp snap, followed by a loud thud, and my neck was released from Vladislav’s fangs and his grip. I blinked down at Vladislav, lying lifelessly on the red-carpeted floor, a broken chair leg sticking out of his chest.

“What happened?” My voice floated out of me as I turned to Laylen.

“We have to go.” He took a hold of my hand and the world swayed as he pulled me toward the door.

My fuzzy brain only allowed me to pick up on a few words Laylen was saying to me: careful, normal, don’t panic. He wiped my neck where Vladislav had bit me with the bottom of his t-shirt, before creaking the door open. He peered up and down the hall, and then we stepped out.

Someone was calling me.

The lights were bright. The music loud.

I saw red.

And then, I fell.

Chapter 6

It was so cold. As cold as death. Was I dead?

My eyes fluttered opened. I was lying down on a floor, the wood flooring cold against my cheek. I slowly sat up and gazed at my surroundings. Where was I?

A cabin. Not the cabin in Colorado. No, this was a different cabin; a much smaller one with no furniture, no fireplace, no nothing.

I got to my feet and made my way over to the window and tried not to flip out when I noticed it had bars on it. Trapped.

“What in the world?” I muttered to myself.

A bang came from behind me and I whirled around, coming face to face with myself. Not the younger version of myself, but the actual eighteen-year-old Gemma.

So I was in a future vision, at least I think I was. This brought no sense of comfort to me, especially since I had no idea where this place was, and also because…well, because, in the vision, my violet eyes looked drained of all emotion.

I watched myself lie down on the floor and curl up into a tiny ball. Then, I just lay there, silent and unblinking. Numb.

What was going on? Had my emotions been erased? Was this actually where I was going to end up?

A surge of fear pulsated through me, and I took off running for one of the two doors the small room had and threw it open. It was a bathroom. I turned around, ran for the other door, and with a lot of effort, shoved it open.

My heart stopped.

Miles and miles of snow-covered mountains, trees poking out of them like little tepee’s. And the log cabin I stood in was smack dab in the middle of it all, secluded from all civilization, for as far as I could see.

I turned around and looked at myself curled up on the hardwood floor. How had I ended up like this? And what was wrong with me? I had an idea, but before I could look around and try to figure out more, an icy gust of wind swept up, and I was blown back, falling into the darkness.

When I opened my eyes, it took my brain a second to process that I was lying on warm asphalt, with a very dim lamppost shining down on me. And that Laylen was kneeling next to me.

“Are you okay?” he asked worriedly.

I gradually sat up, my neck burning with my every movement. “Ahh,” I winced, reaching for my neck.

Then winced again from the pain my touch brought on.

“Easy,” Laylen said, his voice soothing. “It’s going to hurt for a little bit.”

“What’s going to hurt?” I asked, and then I remembered I’d been bitten by a vampire. I began to panic.

Laylen must have seen the panic in my eyes too, because he said, “You’ll be okay, Gemma. The fogginess will wear off in awhile. The actual bite, though, will take a few days to heal.” I started to get to my feet, but the world started spinning. I almost collapsed back to the ground, but Laylen caught me by the arm.

“You’re going to have to take it easy,” he told me, holding me steady. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Well, that explained the wooziness. “I think I might be sick.”

“That’ll wear off in a little while too.” I lightly touched my neck, the skin burning beneath my fingers. “How did we get out of that place?” I asked, because my memory was missing some pieces of what just occurred. In fact, the only thing I could remember clearly was the vision I’d just gone in, and how my eyes in the vision had looked so empty. I wondered if it meant it would actually happen to me—

if I would end up at the cabin that way. The thought was scary.

“Well, by the time we made it out into the bar area, you’d fainted,” Laylen said. “Luckily I caught you before you hit the floor.”

Yeah, I guess that could be considered lucky. But everything else…hmm…not so much.

“So you what?” I asked. “Just carried me out and ran? How did we not get caught?”

“We were lucky we didn’t.” He started to walk, guiding me along with him. “But I think we need to get back to the house before someone realizes I killed Vladislav.”

Good idea.

We headed across an empty parking lot, making sure to stay in the shadows.

“So how much trouble are you going to be in for staking Vladislav?” I asked, gripping onto Laylen’s arms as I was rushed by a spout of dizziness.

He shrugged, but I felt him speed up. “We need to get back to the house and out of sight for awhile.

Eventually, it’ll be forgotten, but I probably won’t be able to show my face in the vampire world again.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked him, carefully maneuvering over a pot hole.

He shrugged. “I don’t know…it wasn’t like I completely enjoyed being around other vampires. But they were the only ones who didn’t judge me for being a vampire.”

His voice was sad and it made my heart hurt for him. “So what do you do then?” I asked “Just wait it out until the vampires do what? Decide they’re over it?”

We turned down an all eyway, tucking ourselves into the dark and out of sight.

“I’m going to have to lie low for awhile,” he said, dodging us around a stack of wooden crates.

Lay low for a while. Wasn’t that what we’d already been doing, to keep me away from Stephan and the Death Walkers? But now I guess vampires were going to have to be added to the “Who We Were Hiding From Now list.” Jeez, if it kept up, every evil creature was going to be after us.

“So what about my mom,” I said to Laylen as we squeezed past a dumpster, the air smelling like rotten eggs mixed with old bananas. “Do you think Vladislav was telling the truth and that she’s still alive?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said sounding absolutely certain.

We reached a tall chain link fence with no way around it. At least that was what I thought. But then Laylen reached down and pulled on the bottom of it until the metal links snapped and he was able to lift up the fence high enough for me to scoot underneath it.

Then he ducked under himself and let the fence go with a clank.

“Vampires have this connection with each other that allows us to sense if the other one’s lying,” he told me as we stepped out onto a sidewalk and back underneath the lights of the lampposts. “I knew from the beginning that Vladislav was going to tell us the truth.”