Page 3 of How to Entice a Fiend

“Fixes nothing,” Alexei snarls. “I don’t trust people all the time. Doesn’t mean I go about trying to kill them.”

Nothing I say will appease him, so I simply don’t say anything at all.

“You think staying silent will fix everything?” Alexei asks.

I don’t know what to say that he will even understand. I’m pretty sure nothing I say or do will change anything; it never does.

Finn gives Alexei a soft smile. “Alexei, please forgive me, you have every right to feel the way you do, and please don’t mistake this as me forgiving Ender, but for right now, let’s focus on Rylee. It doesn’t mean I trust him or that he deserves our help, but Rylee is innocent here.”

“Fuck,” Alexei snarls before opening his laptop. “There’s a traffic camera at the end of this road. The car that held Rylee passed through it, right here. White, large van, we have the license plate, which I’ve already sent out to police in the surrounding areas.”

“So we have to assume the kidnapping was planned if they had a car ready, right?” Claude asks.

“Seems like it. Do you recognize any of the people?” Finn asks me as he looks at the laptop Alexei is holding.

I slowly walk over to the man who clearly hates my guts and would choose to kill me right here if he had a choice and look at the screen. There’s a still of the van that he believes Rylee’s in. There’s a man in the front seat, but that’s all I can see of it.

“Does it show them taking Rylee?”

“No, but the van is the only vehicle that doesn’t follow the flow of traffic. There is too long of a hesitation between this light here and this one,” Alexei responds. “The van either pulled over for an extended period of time or they stopped for a reason… such as grabbing the girl.”

“Can you follow it from here?” I ask. “Which direction did it go?”

“Not too well. Traffic cameras are generally used for high-density areas that have issues, so they’re not commonly used,” Alexei explains. “I’ve sent the information out and will see if anyone else picks up on the vehicle in a different area.”

“I can’t just sit here.”

“I found something,” Marcus says as he comes up from under the bridge holding what looks like an access card. “Seems to have been torn off a clip of some kind. Maybe Rylee ripped it off when she tried to get away.”

Finn takes it and flips it this way and that. “Looks like something for the nearby hospital. I’ll go ask and update you guys as soon as I get an answer.” Then he hesitates as he seems to realize he’s leaving me alone with the rest. I’m not sure if he thinks they’re going to slaughter me and toss my body in a ditch somewhere or if I might try to slaughter them.

They don’t need to worry; I’m in control of myself tonight.

“We have it handled,” Claude says with a beaming smile. Honestly, of all of the vampires, the one who should be most pissed at me seems to be the only one willing to work with me.

“Okay, please be decent beings, please? Pretty please? Do it for Cheetah Legs,” Finn implores.

“Who the fuck is Cheetah Legs? Just hearing that makes me not want to be decent,” I say, which is apparently the wrong thing to say as Marcus and Alexei glower at me.

“Don’t act like you two haven’t also made fun of my phenomenal nickname,” Finn says as he lightly smacks both of their shoulders. “And, Ender, I’m Cheetah Legs, of course.”

I eye the man, unsure how he could have come to that conclusion, but he’s willing to help me so I will call him anything he’d like. “Fine, I will grudgingly call you Cheetah Legs.”

“I… it…” Finn trails off then gives me a smile and two thumbs up. “Thank you. Cheetah Legs out.”

He gets in the car and drives off, but that just leaves me standing here with absolutely no idea what to do. “I’m going… the way the van went,” I decide.

“Do you have a phone we can contact you with?” Claude asks.

“No, that’s okay.”

Claude pulls his personal phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Here, take my phone. The password is 8316. Okay? We’ll call you if we find anything. If you get bored, you can look at the tabs I have open of an absolutelygorgeoussuit I’ve been dying to buy. It has exquisite embroidery that rounds out the edges with buttons made from?—”

I take off before I’m stuck listening to any more of that nonsense. Who cares if the buttons were made of fucking dinosaur bones, I have Rylee to find.

I head in the direction the van had last been seen but I’m not quite sure what to do now that I’m here. While I know it was heading south, that doesn’t mean it never turned offone of the exits. But standing here is getting me nowhere. I consider grabbing a human or two to threaten them into telling me if they’ve seen the vehicle, but the moment they notice me lingering, they quickly move on.

Since the main road continues straight through here, I choose to keep going in the hope of seeing their vehicle somewhere, but I feel like I’m mindlessly moving with no real purpose, wandering this goddamn city. Do they not realize she’s mine? Do they not realize that they can’t take her from me? Or how far I’ll go to get her back?

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