Chapter 22: Newborn Problems

“Oh no,” Lola cried when she saw the empty meat packets strewn over the kitchen floor.

After a quick look around the kitchen, Lola raced down to the basement. She stopped at the foot of the stairs with a shocked expression. Patricia was nowhere to be seen, and the chain that had been holding her captive was broken. It was clear to Lola that Patricia had escaped, and it was equally apparent that she provided the means for that to happen. It was the latter thought that worried her the most. She had no idea how Tony would react when he learned of Patricia’s escape and her help in making it happen.

It was 9:27pm, Saturday night, and Lola was not expecting anyone other than Patricia to be in the house. She had been forewarned that Tony and Jeremiah would be away most of the night. Her immediate fear was that the police would come to the house while she was there alone. She wanted to go back to Mary Thistle’s home to wait for her awakening, but she knew that was not going to happen soon. She quickly decided that a warning call to Tony had to be made now.

“What do you mean, she got away?” Jeremiah screamed across the telephone connection. “Did you let her off chain?” He inquired in a demanding tone.

“I gave her something to eat,” Lola confessed reluctantly. “It was just one steak. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”

“Idiot!” Jeremiah yelled back. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Lola’s anger came to the front in response to Jeremiah’s offensive words, and she ignored his question.

“Where’s Tony?” Lola angrily asked.

Lola was not particularly interested in speaking with Tony, but she no longer wanted to speak with Jeremiah. She tried calling Tony directly, but he never answered his cellphone.

“He’s not here,” Jeremiah growled back. “You need to get out of the house,” he continued angrily.”

“That’s fine with me,” Lola returned testily. “Tell Tony I’ll call him tomorrow night.”

“No!” Jeremiah commanded. “Tony is going to want you here where he can keep an eye on you.”

Jeremiah paused to consider the situation. He knew that Tony wanted him to guard the stash house, but he also knew that he did not want Lola moving about in the streets on her own. Protecting their secret was an important part of Tony’s plan. He also knew that the location of the stash house was a guarded secret even from Lola. His fear was that she might get picked up by the police. After a brief thought, Jeremiah came to a decision on what to do.

“Go to the Corona Plaza Station,” Jeremiah barked. “Wait there by the street. I’ll pick you up in an hour. You got that?” He finished with a commanding tone.

“Yeah,” Lola returned in a voice heavy with resentment. “I got it.”

They disconnected the call without the civility of a goodbye. An hour later they met as planned outside the Corona Plaza Subway Station. Jeremiah picked her up at the curb and immediately drove off after she shut the door. Tony was still out when they arrived at the stash house. Jeremiah went into lecturing Lola on the stupidity of her action, but his anger had more to do with his fear that Patricia was a loss that he might not recoup.

For the most part, Lola endured Jeremiah’s anger in silence. That was a conscious decision by her. She did not want to go into details about Patricia’s escape. She wanted Jeremiah to believe that Patricia slipped out of the house while she was stretched out in the living room watching television. The last thing she wanted Jeremiah or Tony to know was that she left the house to visit Mary Thistle.

Just under a half an hour later, Tony returned to the stash house with Charlie, Ben, Malcolm and Keegan. Despite their tattered and bloody appearance, they were as a giddy as a bunch of five-year olds in a fun park, but that disposition quickly changed. The sight of Lola astonished all of them, but Tony was also angry to see her there.

“What is Lola doing here?” Tony challenged Jeremiah with an annoyed look. “She’s supposed to be at the house watching that plaything of yours.”

“Patricia got away,” Jeremiah quickly announced. “Lola fed her. I told her not to, but she did it anyway.”

Tony’s annoyed expression changed to anger when he turned toward Lola.

“You fed her?” Tony roared as he closed the distance between himself and Lola.

“I gave her one steak,” Lola yelled back. “I didn’t know she was going to break the chain after eating one steak.”

“You didn’t need to know,” Tony yelled back. “You’re supposed to do as you’re told.”

“I’m not one of your thugs, Tony,” Lola growled back with eyes that glinted. “If you didn’t want something like this to happen, then why in the hell did you let Romeo over there drag a girl off the street and chain her up in his basement?” She argued. “How stupid is that?”

Tony seethed with Lola’s every word, and he then turned his anger toward Jeremiah.

“Where is she?” Tony commanded as he moved toward Jeremiah.

“How should I know?” Jeremiah bawled back.

“Where does she live, Jerry?” Tony growled.

“I don’t know where she lives,” Jeremiah returned defensively. “The only time I ever saw her was at the diner. Her purse might still be at the house. I didn’t think to check her address when I took her.”

That answer infuriated Tony, it gave him nothing he could use to control the situation. Lola noted his frustration and instinctively knew that Tony had not given any thought to the bright side.

“Hey, I was there all day,” Lola began with an upbeat inflection. “No cops came to Jeremiah house. She probably hasn’t told anyone.”

Tony pondered that idea.

“Yeah, Lola could be right,” Jeremiah said after a moment of thought. “We did warn her about exposing what she was to the cops.”

“Yeah, but did she believe you?” Tony challenged in a moody muse.

“It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t believe she’s a vampire,” Lola countered with an air of indifference. “She must know she’s different now, and after eating all that meat, she’s feeling pretty good. Besides,” she continued. “She was kidnapped by Prince Charming over here,” Lola spoke while rolling her eyes toward Jeremiah. “She was missing for three days. That’s all the cops need. I’m telling you; the police should have been all over Jeremiah’s house by the time I woke up.”

“I think Lola is right, Tony,” Jeremiah supported eagerly. “I think we should give it some time.”

After a moment of contemplation, Tony relaxed a little. He then turned his attention toward everyone and began sharing his concerns about Patricia and the police. He lectured them on the dangers of exposing their existence to mortals. He told them about the vampire purge that occurred over 2,000 years ago. He told them everything he knew about vampires and about the vampire that made him. At the end of his lecture, he told them about Detective Cassidy Tremaine.

“How do you know that the cops or the feds don't already know about vampires?” Keegan asked.

“David Burrell,” Tony answered with two words. “He’s the vampire that Evan was trying to kill. He's still alive and walking around free. I've been keeping tabs on him. He owns the Cavern Nightclub in Lower Manhattan.”

“So, this cop didn't tell anyone?” Malcolm asked with surprise.

“Maybe they turned her,” Keegan tossed in.

“No, she's still mortal. I've been keeping tabs on her too,” Tony advised contemplatively. “She spends most of her day running around in the daylight. There's no way she's one of us. And if she had told the feds she wouldn't still be working as a detective.”

“So, what's her game?” Jeremiah asked bluntly.

“It’s obvious. She doesn't want anyone to know,” Lola surmised as if speaking the obvious.

“Yeah, that's the way I have it figured too,” Tony agreed. “But she may change her mind if she finds out about us,” he sternly added with a look toward Jeremiah.

“So, we kill her,” Charlie concluded with barely a thought.

“Those other vampires might not like that if she’s keeping their secret,” Lola suggested with a who knows shrug.

“What are they going to do, bite us? We bite too,” Tony declared with a pronounced look of confidence. “Our secret is their secret,” he glibly continued. “And in a few months’ time, there's going to be five of us for every one of them. All we need to do is keep our heads down. It's the humans we have to worry about.”

There was an awkward moment of silence that followed Tony’s last remark. It shortly became apparent to Tony that something was not being said by one or more of the others in the room.

“What?” Tony asked with a stern look toward Charlie.

“Yeah, about that, I may have told someone,” Charlie hesitantly confessed.

“You told someone?” Tony challenged.

“I—turned someone—into a vampire,” Charlie reluctantly stated.

“What?” Tony roared back at Charlie. “Who?” He shouted with a startled expression.

“Paula,” Charlie softly answered with a word. “I told you about her. We've been together for…”

“You turned her?” Tony asked in a voice laced with disbelief.

“It was an accident,” Charlie quickly defended. “I couldn’t stop myself. It was either turn her or let her die.”

Tony momentarily grumbled with incredulity before speaking his next words.

“Anyone else?”

Tony fixed his gaze on Ben but received no response other than brief look from out the corners of his eyes and a shake of his head. Malcolm and Keegan shook their heads and mumbled out a no after Tony looked at them. Tony was all set to be relieved by their responses when Lola raised her hand. Tony turned toward her with a questioning look.

“You know Mary—Thistle?” Lola gently questioned.

Tony tossed his hands up and gave Lola a look of disbelief.

“You were supposed to stay in the house,” Tony yelled at Lola.

“I wasn't going to sit around cooped up in the house all day,” Lola defiantly insisted. “And I hadn’t seen Mary in six years.”

“Do you know what you did? Do any of you?” Tony raged at everyone around him.

“Mary knows not to say anything,” Lola vehemently asserted.

Tony turned to look at Charlie and gave him a questioning look.

“Paula is no rat,” Charlie responded to Tony’s unspoken question. “I told her not to talk to anyone.”

Tony glared at Charlie a moment before turning his attention back to Patricia Boyd.

“But this Patricia doesn’t know anything, and if the humans find out about us, the jig is up,” Tony emphatically declared. “They will run us down. They’ve done it before. The only way this works is if the humans don’t know we exist. We need to get her off the streets before she can expose us.”

“What if there are cops all around this vampire that he made?” Malcolm asked with a point toward Jeremiah.

Tony considered Malcolm's question. He understood that there was still the possibility that Patricia went to the police.

“Fine,” Tony said with resignation.

Tony took out his cellphone and began dialing his contact inside the NYPD. It showed in his demeanor that he did not want to make this call, but he knew he had to. It was not his practice to discuss sensitive matters over the telephone. His normal practice was to send a text for a face-to-face meeting, but the information he wanted was time sensitive. After a brief conversation with his NYPD contact, Tony learned that there were no warrants, alerts or notices regarding Patricia, Mary or Paula. After getting that information, he quickly discontinued the call.

“Okay, we wait to see how things fall out with this… Patricia,” Tony began with a pondering expression. “I’ll call my contact again in the morning and if there are still no alerts, then we bring them in—all of them. We have to keep this in house.”

The conversation concluded with Tony’s last statement. Everyone began to settle in for the day. After deciding who should sleep and who should stay awake, Lola began feeling a growing sexual excitement. Instinctively, she looked at Tony and found him looking back at her. The sight of him staring at her validated in her mind that there was truth to Jeremiah’s claim that their pheromones were affecting each other. Her growing sexual arousal fascinated and annoyed Lola. She did not like the idea of Tony being in control of her sexual desires, but she was intrigued by what was happening inside of her. She tried to resist the sensation even while she monitored her growing craving for sex. Despite her best effort, the sensation continued working to disarm her resistance. After a few minutes time, her desire for sex was all she could think about, that was when she made a conscious decision to stop resisting her arousal. Her decision was partially motivated by a desire to keep Tony in the dark about her displeasure with the renewal of their relationship. The other motivating factor was her arousal, by then it outweighed her objections. She allowed Tony to lead her to an upstairs room to satiate their lust. The encounter was as intense and as physical as it was the day before and far more so than any time when they were mortals.